A/N: If you read the last chapter the night it came out, you may wish to go back and check again - I made two minor changes to it after it was originally published. Namely, the photos getting sent to the support company was Hachiman's fault, and Yukinoshita only saw the photos & replaced them rather than actually stealing them for no good reason. Thanks again to Pinklestia for beta reading!

Also, check out the Spacebattles thread if you want to see OreGaHero's first fan art by the amazing EnderHeart Enya!
And now, the story.

In comparison to the first two days of the Hero course at U.A., the rest of the week was much less physically demanding. It only made sense; unlike me, most people didn't have a regeneration quirk, and while Recovery Girl could heal serious injuries with a kiss, most students needed rest days in order to recover from muscle strains, quirk overuse, and all of the other attendant difficulties inherent to the Hero Course. No, there were plenty of days that only involved lectures or coursework, days that a manga focused on the so called 'exciting' pieces of our lives might choose to skip over entirely. And then, of course, the anime version would likely add a bit of it as a filler episode, with some cheap comedy. Thankfully no one used laugh tracks anymore. Maybe some slapstick? Would I keep accidentally seeing girls naked or something like that? I honestly hope nothing like that happened again… mostly. Dammit Zaimokuza, get out my head! Just because I talked to you once or twice doesn't mean you can infest me with your shitty and cheap Web Novel ideas! Which reminded me, I should really check in on him to see what he was doing. Where had he gone to high school, anyways?

Despite all that, I rarely had time for extraneous thoughts. Just because those days weren't physically strenuous doesn't mean that they weren't demanding in other ways. Ker-crack! "You!" The Over-18 Heroine Midnight said with a crack of her whip, pointing it at a hapless Kaminari Denki. "What do you think of first when you hear my name?"

"I, um, uhhh…" Kaminari stammered, clearly uncomfortable at having been put on the spot. Quietly, I thanked any deities listening for the fact that it hadn't been me. "Um, your, um, your pictures - that is, the way you look, um, your record, your, um, news about you," he trailed off, clearly not willing to go too far or to risk offending a teacher.

Midnight shifted her posture slightly, and the atmosphere around her shifted from an intimidating aura to a more neutral impression. "Would it be fair to say that you first think of my appearance and my reputation?"

"Uh, yeah," Kaminari said. "Totally."

Midnight nodded. "Thank you, Kaminari-san, for answering a deliberately difficult question. In case you were all wondering, yes, I do know that my reputation is a bit less than sterling - some might say racy, others might say that it verges on or enters into the realm of the inappropriate." Oi, your reputations a ways past that! Ker-crack! Another crack of her whip, this time finishing with Midnight pointing directly at Miura. "You! Given that I have a less-than-perfect reputation, why am I teaching Public Relations at U.A. High School?"

In comparison to Kaminari, Miura was far less discomfited at being put on the spot, though still a little bit shocked. "I -" Miura paused for a moment to think about it. "I'm sorry sensei, but I don't know."

Again, Midnight reverted back to a more ordinary posture. "Good answer, Miura," Midnight said, and she took a few steps to sit down informally on the desk at the front of the room. "Knowing that you don't know something is step one to fixing that problem. Here's a third question, one for anyone in the room, but it's also rhetorical so don't bother shouting out answers just yet. Why would someone choose a scandalous hero name such as 'the Over-18 hero, Midnight', rather than something safe and relatively more socially acceptable like 'the Sleepy Swimsuit hero, Sandwoman?'"

There was a profound silence as she let that thought sink in, and then Midnight brought our attention back to her with a loud clap of her hands. "First things first. My name is Nemuri Kayama, the Pro Hero Midnight. I prefer that you all call me Nemuri-sensei or Midnight-sensei. Despite any misconceptions that you may have about me, I am here teaching you Public Relations because I am very, very good at my job. Now, normally this class would start with some lectures on branding, insignias, name recognition, and so on to get you all ready to choose hero names before you start with internships and apprenticeships. This year, however, we're going to be mixing things up a little bit. Can you guess why?"

Midoriya raised his hand, shaking a little bit with nervousness. "U-um, is it b-because of All Might?"

"Correct!" Midnight said, slapping the desk next to her with her flogger for emphasis. "There's going to be a lot more media attention on U.A. this year. 'Heroes mean headlines' is basically a media truism in this day and age, and reporters are going to be flocking around here like vultures, asking you all about what it's like to be taught by All Might, and so on. So, we're going to be switching some things around to give you more tools to handle the media right off the bat."

She paused, but nobody spoke up. "Okay. So, that's the bad news. The good news is, this media attention also represents an opportunity for you all." There was a rustle of excitement, a subtle shifting in everyone's seats as all of my highly motivated classmates perked up to listen better. For my own part, I was listening closely as well, if only to figure out how to avoid as much of all this fame and attention as possible. "Normally, the media doesn't even bother with first years until the Sports Festival. Since the media is already going to be potentially looking into you all, we're going to skip forward a few steps and actually start building your reputations right away."

With that, Midnight hopped off the desk, pulled down a projection screen, and flipped on the projector with a remote. What it showed was what looked to be a blank form titled 'Hero Assistance Request' at the top. "This," Midnight said while thwacking the projection screen with a riding crop, "Is a Hero Assistance Request form. They've already been passed out to your classmates in the General Education, Business, and Support classes. Basically, these are a way for you to all to start getting hands-on practice at interacting with the community. A significant chunk of neighborhood heroing doesn't involve fighting villains or performing disaster relief, but rather getting cats out of trees, mediating disputes, and helping little old ladies carry their groceries; in other words, it's stuff that you don't even need a quirk to do - which is handy, because none of you have your provisional licenses yet, so you wouldn't be allowed to use them in any case."

Midnight grinned, enjoying the consternation on the faces of a few of the other people in class. "Don't think this is just make-work, kids. Aside from giving you all practice talking to ordinary citizens, it's also helping you build up your fanbases, giving you connections to people in the Support and Business tracks, creating people who in five years will be able to say in TV interviews that you were helpful and friendly even as teenagers… and, because you'll be working in groups, it'll be teaching you teamwork."

Ugh. Group work. Either an excuse for popular people to pressure their classmates of lower social status into doing the majority of the work while they chit-chat and have fun, and subsequently using their so-called 'superior presentation skills' to take credit for all of the unpopular student's hard work, or an excuse for one member of a group to be marginalized, ignored, 'accidentally' left off of group text messages telling them where the group meetup is occurring, and then blamed for all of the group's failures at the final grade. Well, nobody really knew that much about each other yet, so it was possible that this particular example wouldn't be that bad - "... Group D: Hikigaya, Yukinoshita, Yuigahama, Bakugo. Group E: Hayama, Jiro, Kaminari, Miura. That's all." - wait, what did she just say? I had to have heard that incorrectly, right? There's no way that they would have placed me into a team with the three people least likely to get along with me, would they?

I looked around the room. A considerable percentage of it was looking at me with pity and schadenfreude in their eyes, with three notable exceptions. Bakugo, who looked irritated, although I supposed that wasn't particularly unusual for him. Yukinoshita, who looked subtly disgusted. And Yuigahama, who was doing her best to try to smile at me and look cheerful, but who actually looked a little bit constipated. It was official. I was doomed. "And yes," Midnight said with a note of sadistic cheer in her voice. "The groups are final, so don't bother arguing. In the meantime, if you kids need them, there are study rooms across the hallway that you can split into in order to discuss your assignments privately. Have fun~!"

"Wait! Sensei!" Miura stood up slightly, hurriedly trying to get her attention before everyone broke off into separate groups.

Midnight raised a condescending eyebrow. "Are you deaf? I already said the groups were final."

Shaking her head, Miura said "No, it's not about that. You never answered that hypothetical question you gave us. Why did you decide to be… Midnight, instead of someone else?"

"Ah." Midnight said, stamping her fist sideways onto her open palm, "Right, almost forgot. Well, there are two reasons. First, with me being an openly and publicly racy heroine, every other hero whose powers require that they wear skin-tight clothing, or no clothing," she said with meaningful looks at Yaoyorozu and Hagakure, "looks less offensive by comparison. It gives some cover from social indignation to all the girls out there who are worried that their powers might be too embarrassing to use."

Whoa, careful there Nemuri-sensei, I thought to myself. If you keep saying cool things like that, I might almost start to respect you!

Then Midnight smiled, licking her lips openly and sensuously. "Secondly, and most importantly… it's my hobby."

Aaaand there it went. Well, that didn't last long. As if slightly stunned, everybody quietly filtered off into their respective meeting rooms - someone, probably Midnight-sensei, had helpfully taped signs to the doors indicating who went where - and I soon found myself in a room that looked like it was normally used for storing spare chairs and desks, all of which had been shoved up against one wall to create a space just long enough for a single long, narrow table and a few chairs. Bakugo slouched in one chair, tipping it back to lean up against the wall, while Yukinoshita sat at the head of the table like she was holding court, Yuigahama attending at her right hand. Doing my best not to scowl, I noisily scraped a chair over to the foot of the table opposite Yukinoshita, sitting at a right angle to the table rather than directly facing it so that I wouldn't have my back to the door in case someone came in.

And then we sat. Silently. For almost a full minute, seemingly nobody willing to make the first move and actually say something. A manila folder detailing our assignment sat in the middle of the table, so far unopened, none of us willing to say anything.

"Eh heh heh, so, I guess we'd better get started, huh?" Yuigahama, that brave soul, was the first to break the awkward atmosphere of the room. Of course, that only meant that she was immediately rebuffed.

"Tche." Bakugo clicked his tongue, "I don't see the point of this kind of boring-ass shit." He scowled. "Any stupid extra can get a cat down from a tree. Ain't we supposed to be here to learn how to be heroes?"

Yukinoshita frowned at Bakugo. "You.. are aware that 'extras' are a fictional concept and that no such thing exists in the real world? If not, I really might begin to question U.A.'s admission process."

"Heh. Sounds like the sort of thing an extra would say." Bakugo rolled his eyes at Yukinoshita. "You know what I mean. Some asshole uses his quirk to snatch a purse, the police don't call All Might, they call some random C-lister or they just take care of it themselves. U.A. is supposed to be a school for the best of the best, so why are they bothering us with shit that anybody could do?"

"Midnight-sensei gave us a list of reasons," Yukinoshita said calmly. "I suppose it's not inconceivable that all of those explosions might have damaged your eardrums; are you aware schools of U.A.'s caliber generally have assistive learning services for the hard of hearing?"

"What did you just say you little -" Bakugo shouted, sitting forward, his chair landing hard on the tile floor.

"I could write it down for you," Yukinoshita interrupted, her eyes gleaming with satisfaction, "if you're having trouble hearing things the first time."

"Screw you!" Bakugo shouted, punctuating his retort with an explosion. "I heard you just fine! And her, too! What I'm saying is, most of what Midnight said is just bullshit! You really think anything we do today's gonna matter once we start taking down actual villains?" He snorts. "They're just having us do fucking busywork! Fuck! I thought this shit'd be different from junior high!"

Ugh. It wasn't like I disagreed with Bakugo; actually, in my opinion he was probably more right than wrong. But if he bailed, that meant that working on whatever our project was would be down to me, Yukinoshita, and Yuigahama, and that just sounded like a recipe for disaster. No, if I didn't want to be left alone with two girls who had every reason to hate my guts, I had to keep Bakugo from bailing on us. So naturally, I insulted him. "So, you've given up already?" I asked.

"Huuuuh? Say that again, I dare you." Bakugo's eyes narrowed in my direction.

Still sitting sideways to the table, not really bothering to look in his direction, I did so. "Oh, it's nothing. I just thought, man, if I were already giving up on my declaration of not letting anyone else take first place, the easiest way would be to declare that all of the hard contests didn't really matter."

A couple of small explosions went off in Bakugo's hands, little pop pop pops like fireworks. "Fuck you, you shitty extra, I said it was fucking busywork, not that I wasn't gonna fucking do it! What's so hard about this shit?"

"Ah. My mistake." I said, keeping my tone neutral. "When we actually talk to our client, talking formally won't be a problem, then?"

Bakugo's mouth opened a little wider, as if to yell more, and then he closed it with another click of his tongue. "Tche. It isn't like I don't know how, I just never see the f-" he stopped again for a brief second, then resumed." - the flipping point."

"Ah. Got it," I said. Unfortunately, with that one potential problem cut off, silence descended back onto the storage room where we all sat. The seconds ticked on, until finally Bakugo broke the silence once again.

"So, are we all just gonna sit around with our thumbs up our asses, or are we actually gonna find out what the job is?" he growled, glaring over at Yuigahama where she held the folder.

"Oh! Right!" Yuigahama said, opening the folder over by her and Yukinoshita. In addition to the request form itself, there was also a photo of the requester; I caught a glimpse of a pretty face and white hair before the folder was laid flat. Yukinoshita saw it too, because she leaned forward slightly to examine it.

"Yuigahama-san," Yukinoshita said, "it appears that our client is a girl. We may need to take precautions."

"Oi. What's that supposed to mean?" I asked, my eyebrow twitching in irritation.

"Only that between your propensity for overdoing things when acting on a pretty girl's behalf and the questionable nature of your actions the other day, we may want to set up some ground rules ahead of time to keep your disreputable gaze from inconveniencing our client," Yukinoshita stated frankly.

"Hmph," I said, rolling my eyes at Yukinoshita. "If anybody's going to make somebody uncomfortable by looking at them, it's you with that judgemental look on your face. You do know that accidents happen, right?"

Yukinoshita nodded. "They do, which is why I only labeled your actions as questionable, despite your proven capabilities in analyzing quirks and their weaknesses."

"Shit, Hikigaya. You give her opponent yesterday a last-minute powerup too or something?" Bakugo said resentfully.

I blinked at him. I looked at the girls, then back to him. "Um. I was her opponent. Well, it was me and Kirishima against the two of them, really. You, uh, didn't hear?"

Bakugo scoffed. "Yeah, right. Like I don't got better shit to do than to listen to gossip about extras." Mentally, I translated that into a 'no, nobody told him.' Well, I suppose he isn't exactly the sort of person to make fast friends… not that I'm anyone to talk. "So what, you're pissed because he beat you?" Bakugo continued, directing his question to Yukinoshita. "Tche. If you've got time to be pissed, you've got time to get over it and start getting stronger so it doesn't happen again."

Yukinoshita, for once, actually blushed a little bit. "No, it wasn't the loss. It was -" she paused for a second, "- he used his quirk to -" another pause, "- well, he wound up using his quirk to see rather more of both of us than we would have preferred him to."

Before I could come up with anything to say in my own defense, Yuigahama butted in. "Um, Yukinon, I'm sure it wasn't Hikki's fault. Even All Might-sensei said these sorts of things happen all the time, and we wound up seeing that by accident too, s-so, um, let's all get along, all right?"

As my heart sank into my stomach, Yukinoshita's lips quirked up into a tiny smile. "Hm." it was barely even a laugh, just one single close-mouthed chuckle, but I still died inside. "Yes, you're right," Yukinoshita said. "let's -"

Suddenly, she was cut off by a knock on the door. "U-um, is this service group D?" a soft, demure voice called from the outside. Slowly, the door slid open. The voice's owner was a white-haired beauty with sparkling blue eyes; between the short bob cut of her hair and the gym uniform she was wearing, she looked like an athlete, and the wide smile on her face was so pure and innocent that it looked totally genuine, even to me. "Thank you so much for accepting my request!"

For a second, we all sat there with poleaxed expressions on our faces, trying to figure out how to tell this pure individual that we had no idea what her request was, because we still hadn't gotten around to reading it yet, but I quickly managed to rally myself. "Well, we're certainly happy to help you out," I said, stretching the truth only a little, "but can you explain just a little bit more about what you want us to do and why you need our help to do it?"

"Sure!" she replied brightly. "U-um, basically, I really like tennis. I've been playing it my whole life, and even my quirk is a little bit tennis-like, so when I came to U.A. I was really looking forward to being in the Tennis Club! But, um…" The girl looked to the side, as if not quite sure how to say something. "Apparently there aren't very many members left from the upperclassmen, and the ones who are still here aren't very good. And not a lot of people want to join a sports club because they'd rather be practicing with their quirks to try to get into the Hero Course, or because our Sports Festival doesn't put a lot of emphasis on Quirkless sports like tennis, and stuff like that. So I was really hoping you guys could help me find a way to recruit more people, especially if they're athletes!" And with that, she gave us a cute little formal bow.

"Well, we will do our best," Yukinoshita said, settling the manila folder full of paperwork by rapping it on the table. "Team D consists of myself, Yukinoshita Yukino, this is Yuigahama Yui, over by the wall there is Bakugo Katsuki, and in front of you is Hikigaya Hachiman." I gave the white-haired girl a nod as my name was spoken. "And you were… Totsuka Saika, correct?"

"Yes! Nice to meet you!" Totsuka said with a brilliant smile and tilting her head slightly to the side. C-Cute! My heart practically skipped a beat. I could feel a surge of red beginning to tint my cheeks, and I had to cough into my fist a little bit to try and hide it.

"Okay!" Yuigahama said brightly. "Well, this doesn't seem too hard, right? I'm sure we can come up with something to help you! Come on in, have a seat!"

Totsuka did, sitting anxiously with her knees pressed together. I kind of wanted to pat her head to reassure her, or something. "Um, so, I figured that I'd probably have to take charge of the club," she said, "so I need to polish my skills enough that it's not too weird for a first-year to be in charge, and I'm hoping that if everyone else sees me working hard they'll follow suit, but other than that I don't really have any ideas for how to get new members once I'm in charge or for how to make the ones who are still there get serious about practice or anything like that. Have any of you guys been in charge of a club before, or anything like that?"

"Hmph," Bakugo grunted, still balancing his chair back against the wall. "Not me. I was too busy training to go pro." I could believe it - he had nearly as much muscle as I did, and I was a dirty cheater who didn't have to work for it.

"I attempted to join athletic clubs a couple of times," volunteered Yukinoshita. "Unfortunately, after I began thoroughly outclassing everyone else in the club despite only being a beginner, they would always ask me to leave." Totsuka made an adorably dismayed face in response to this. Inwardly, I agreed. I couldn't tell whether she was bragging, or asking to be pitied. Totsuka's feelings showed on her face, though, so Yukinoshita quickly clarified that "Ah, but I also had other issues with my classmates in junior high. I don't think there'd be a problem if you were the strongest player on your team."

Yuigahama laughed nervously. "Ahaha, um, I was in the fashion club in junior high but I wasn't the leader or anything, so I dunno. But! Um, I remember a lot of the stuff we did to find members, so that's probably helpful, right?" Thankfully, this seemed to cheer Totsuka up, and she nodded in agreement.

And then everyone looked at me. Well, normally I would have said that I was the 'President' of the Go Home Club, but there was a cute girl there who I hadn't already mortally offended, so I decided to try to be slightly less lame, not that I was capable of much in that direction but every little bit helped. "Well, I don't really have any experience either, but I don't think recruiting is going to be too complicated, honestly," I began to explain. "If we make ads or something that emphasize Totsuka-chan's feminine appeal, I'm sure a lot of boys would be interested."

Totsuka pouted at me. "Um… Hikigaya-san…" she said, looking up at me through long eyelashes.

"Yes?" I asked, already bracing for a preemptive rejection. Well, it wasn't exactly my first time getting shot down by a cute gi-

"I'm a boy," Totsuka finished.

"Ah," I said intelligibly. "I see."

"It's - well, I don't want to say it's actually okay, because I hate it when this happens, but it isn't the first time, so it's not your fault." Totsuka-chan, no, Totsuka-kun said, still kind of pouting in an adora - in a slightly feminine way.

"Ah." I said, still recovering from the perspective whiplash. "Sorry." Dammit, why am I the only one who catches blame for this? Even Yukinoshita thought he was a girl initially!

Bakugo snorted in derision. "Okay, then. First thing we do is we work on your upper body some so that you look less like a wuss. I should have some old training plans from a few years ago that'd be about your speed…" Totsuka wilted slightly. I'm not sure if it was the insult, or the implication that he was only as strong as Bakugo had been in elementary school.

"Indeed," Yukinoshita chimed in. "If you run until you die, do pushups until you die, and do lunges until you die, then you should show some results quickly… probably, anyways." Totsuka wilted further. "Ah, and I can give you some copies of my agility training plans. You can probably complete… at least the first ten to twenty percent of them?"

Before our client's morale could plummet further, I spoke up. "We'll be training right there next to you, of course," as much fun as that would be, "and I wouldn't call myself a pro, but I probably know enough about tennis to be a decent training partner for you."

"What about me?" Yuigahama asked, and I frowned for a second in thought.

"Well, you can help Totsuka with his training, of course," I said, mulling an idea over in my mind, "but maybe you could also take a look at the Tennis Club uniforms? If they're old or outdated, maybe you could alter them a little bit?"

"Yeah! I could do that!" Yuigahama said excitedly, before her face fell. "Oh wait, maybe not. We're not supposed to use our Quirks for this."

"We're not allowed to use them in public," I corrected her. "Not without our licenses. But if you took uniforms home or something, I'm sure nobody would know or care whether you used your quirk or a sewing machine to alter them."

"Ah! That's true!" Yuigahama said. "Okay! Leave it to me!"

"And while we're on the subject of quirks… Totsuka-san, you said you had a quirk that was vaguely tennis-related?" I asked, an idea percolating in the back of my mind. "Is it something that would be useful in an event like the Sports Festival?"

"Huh?" Totsuka said, tilting his head sideways adorably. "Mmm, I suppose it could be? I don't know, I don't really use it that often. And I'm not really that interested in becoming a pro hero, so I sort of thought I'd just skip it, or maybe just participate for the experience."

"Well, what if you participated to build awareness for the Tennis Club?" I pointed out. "Sure, most people do it to show they have what it takes to be pro heroes, but there's no actual rule saying that you have to be a hero even if you do well. And on the other hand, getting in and doing well would raise your visibility and be great advertising."

"Oi," Bakugo called out to me, his eyebrow twitching. "Don't take the sports festival so lightly. It's not somewhere that any random extra can just... try to be competitive."

"Hmm. You're probably right," said Tostuka, "but if it worked, then Hikigaya-san is right, it'd be really helpful! And if not, then it's not like it's exactly a bad goal to shoot for."

"Tche. Your funeral," Bakugo said, flexing his fingers like he was going to make Totsuka explode right then and there, "because if you're serious about trying to keep up with the pros, you really are going to have to work like you're going to die."

And to Totsuka's credit, he did. For the next several days, Yukinoshita, Bakugo, Yuigahama, and I ran the Tennis Club not-yet-President into the ground. Bakugo and Yukinoshita supervised upper body and lower body drills respectively, while Yuigahama and I followed along with Totsuka so that he wasn't just doing the exercises alone. Yuigahama, used to depending on her quirk to boost her strength, suffered a bit; I was in good enough overall shape that I could finish most of the exercises without too many problems, but as soon as Bakugo saw that I wasn't having any problems with regular push-ups, he made me switch to exercises like clapping push-ups and one armed push-ups, both of which sucked. Yukinoshita's agility drills on the other hand were tricky from the start, and once I was okay at a lower speed all I had to do to make them harder was to go faster. For his part, Totsuka was only slightly better off than Yuigahama, but he suffered through all of the exercises gamely, not complaining even when his whole body was dripping with sweat.

Once we finished the hardcore workouts, we would switch to technique drills, volleying balls at Totsuka at the outdoor tennis court and running him ragged, and then when he was starting to get exhausted, letting him practice teaching us tennis moves and so on in preparation for similarly teaching his club members later. That was a little bit challenging, to be honest; of the four of us, I already had pretty good tennis skills, Bakugo tended not to listen very well and then made up for it all with raw natural reflexes, and Yukinoshita had the incredibly obnoxious habit of picking up everything flawlessly on the first try. Luckily, we still had Yuigahama.

A couple of times, we managed to book time in the Quirk Gym, which was always in high demand since it was legally required for a licensed quirk user to be supervising quirk practice at all times, and there was a limited supply of both supervisors and practice spaces while simultaneously almost everybody was trying to get time to practice with their quirks before the Sports Festival. Totsuka's quirk was called Reflect Racket, an Emitter quirk that let him create glowing blue ovals in midair that canceled and reversed the velocities of anything that they touched, and which he could either conjure in stationary positions or move relative to a part of his body. Naturally, it only took me about five minutes after I copied his quirk to start jailbreaking it.

"So? Do you think there's something I can do with my quirk to make it more useful?" Totsuka asked naively, swinging a blue oval pane of force around like it was a tennis racket. "I know I can swing my quirk into things, and that can knock them over and stuff if they aren't attached to the ground, but it's not very good for actually, um. Hurting villains, or anything like that."

"Yeah, I have a few ideas," I said, conjuring one of my own discs as I did so. Predictably, mine were only about the size of the palm of my hand, and only slowed things down rather than reversing their direction, but they were still useful as demonstration aids. "If you practice creating them relative to parts of your body that aren't your hands, you can create armor," I said, a blue-glowing oval appearing over my shoulder, then in front of my chest as examples. "And it's even armor that doesn't slow you down when it gets hit, which is amazing." Next, I conjured a blue disc next to my foot, tilted up at a 45 degree angle or so. "If you create them next to your feet specifically, and leave them static, you can use them as ways to change your direction instantaneously, without having to worry about traction or your leg strength." I tried stepping on my pane of force, which immediately broke, but he understood what I meant. "You could probably even use them to walk on air, once you got good enough at keeping your balance as you bounced around. Or at arm or chest height, you could push off of them to get back to your feet if you got knocked off balance… well, that's what comes to mind to start off with, anyways."

Totsuka's mouth dropped open. "Hikigaya… are you a Quirk Counselor?"

"Heh." I scoffed, my voice dripping with derision. "Don't even talk to me about Quirk Counselors. I must have seen one every week for like half a year, trying to get my quirk to be less useless. He kept giving me all sorts of exercises, trying to teach me how to make weak quirks useful and stuff like that, but eventually he just… gave up on me or something." I frowned, thinking about it. Dr. Kobayakawa had been just another shitty adult, but for a while he had been a shitty adult that I had kind of liked. "So yeah, when he decided that my power was never going to be useful, he switched to trying to convince me to be a quirk counselor like him, instead of actually helping me like he was supposed to, so I stopped going." Looking up, I noticed that everyone was looking at me with weird expressions on their faces, so I shrugged. "What? It's fine. I did pick up some useful skills from it all, so I guess it wasn't a total waste of time."

"Ah, Hikigaya-san," Yukinoshita ventured, "isn't it possible that they were simply trying to encourage you to become a quirk counselor because they thought you'd be good at it?"

"Pfff. Me? Him?" I shook my head reflexively. "I sincerely doubt it. Now come on, let's get practicing, we've only got the gym for the next hour."

For the next week and a half, the five of us sort of fell into a routine, working out, using our quirks, and all getting better at tennis together. It was even kind of fun. If not for the fact that it was an event with mandatory participation, I might even have let myself wonder if this was what it felt like to have friends. So naturally, it wasn't long before someone came to disrupt our peaceful equilibrium.

"Oh, you guys are playing tennis too?" Looking over in the direction of the voice, I saw that it belonged to Hayama Hayato from our class. Behind him were Jiro, Kaminari, Miura, and two boys that I didn't recognize, a shorter, wiry-looking guy with scruffy hair and weaselly eyes, and a taller, brawnier guy with a flat nose and a slightly dull expression. All of them were in athletic uniforms, and holding tennis rackets. "Mind if we join in?"

I looked at them, then down to Totsuka, who was currently sitting on the ground gasping and covered in sweat, with both of his knees skinned raw from a bad collision with the ground. (In theory, I could have used some of my stockpile of Recovery Girl's quirk to fix it, but I was saving that for emergencies, plus it would have been really embarrassing, so I didn't. Instead, Yukinoshita had gone off to grab some medical supplies.) "Actually, yeah," I said, a note of irritation entering my voice, "we're not playing around here. This is for our assignment for Midnight-sensei's class."

"What a coincidence," Miura said, a snide note entering her voice, "that's what we're here for too. Ōoka and Yamato are trying to get in shape for the Sports Festival, and tennis is great for agility and reflex training."

"So are, like, a million other things," I said. "Totsuka-san is trying to specifically get good at tennis, so he can help out the Tennis Club. Can't you find someplace to train that isn't going to just get in our way?"

"Aw, come on, man," Kaminari said, an irrepressibly cheerful grin on his face, "don't be like that. Why don't we all just play together? We'll help your guy train, and you can help ours, it'll be fun!"

There was a sharp pop as Bakugo drew attention to himself, setting off an explosion in his hand. "Yo," Bakugo said, a couple of smaller pops going off afterwards, crackling like fireworks. "If training is fun, you're doing it wrong. This shit ain't no game. Girlyboy here's putting actual effort into this, so stay out of his way." Yes, that was what passed as an actual compliment from Bakugo. Totsuka, who like the rest of us was slowly growing used to Bakugo's foul mouth, even managed to look faintly cheered by the statement despite Bakugo's awful taste in nicknames. Our uninvited guests, on the other hand, looked mildly appalled.

"Now, now," Hayama said, effortlessly taking control of the situation like the good-looking riajuu bastard he was, "I'm sure Denki-kun didn't mean to insult how hard everybody's been working. Why don't we let Totsuka-san decide what he'd like to do? How about it?" he asked, turning to Totsuka directly, "want a few extra people to practice against, and we can all train together? I think Ōoka and Yamato are your classmates, aren't they?"

Ugh. Hayama played dirty. Now that he'd pointed that out explicitly, if Totsuka rejected them, he'd risk becoming a pariah in his own class. Predictably, when Totsuka replied it was with a bit of a stammer. "Well… um… actually I think I'd prefer to - "

"Huh? Speak up! I can't hear you!" Miura interrupted, ruining Totsuka's momentum.

"Oi," I said, butting in before Totsuka could cave to peer pressure, "isn't it a little hypocritical to put Totsuka on the spot like that? Nobody comes to U.A. hating the idea of being a hero," with myself perhaps the notable exception, "so trying to make him choose between helping others and doing what's in his own best interest… don't you think that's kind of a cheap shot? Especially when he's already putting in all this effort for other people, just not necessarily ones that are standing right here in front of him, looking disappointed?" Hmph. Don't even think about trying dirty tactics against a dirty bastard like me. No matter how low you sink, I can always go lower!

"Then, how about this?" Hayama asked, adopting a cocky grin. "If we can prove we're good enough at tennis that we wouldn't be holding Totsuka-san back, then there's no problem, right?"

Going to take by force what you can't take by persuasion, huh? Still, the four of us have been working on tennis pretty aggressively for the past few days, so it's not like we're exactly easy targets. On the other hand - "Heh heh heh heh. Now that's what I'm talking about! Get on the court, airhead, and I'll show you what you're messing with." Ooor, Bakugo could just accept for all of us, but whatever, it's fine. They can't be that much better than us, can they?

As it turned out, they could. Or rather, Miura could. Once we had accepted Hayama's challenge, she promptly proposed a mixed doubles match, which since Yukinoshita was still gone meant that we were relying on Bakugo and Yuigahama. Honestly, Bakugo might have been fine if he had been going up against either Hayama or Miura on his own, and Yuigahama might have been able to at least stall for time by herself, but neither of them had any experience with sharing a court, and Miura spotted that right away. Ball after ball was aimed precisely for the weak point between the two of them, usually resulting in either Bakugo going for balls that he shouldn't have and being drawn out of position, or Yuigahama not going for balls that she should have for fear of getting in Bakugo's way. When it was our turn to serve, Bakugo's explosive aerial serves were enough to get us a game or two, but Yuigahama's services were generally… well, let's just say less helpful.

By the time that Yukinoshita returned, holding a medical box, we were down 5 games to 2. As she walked across the court, she drew everybody's attention, finally coming to a stop by Totsuka, who was by this point sitting up in the referee's chair. "Here," Yukinoshita said, handing Totsuka the supplies. "Sorry it took so long, the fields here are quite large and it took me some time to get to the supply station without using my quirk."

"Don't worry about it," he replied, smiling innocently at Yukinoshita. "Thanks for your help!"

"So? What's the situation?" Yukinoshita asked me, taking a spot by my side.

"Mm, well, Hayama's group wants to share the courts with us, despite the fact that they'd get in our way, so they challenged us to a game for the right to join us. Right now, they're about to win."

Yukinoshita looked at me sharply. "And why haven't you subbed in for Bakugo, yet?" she said sharply. "I doubt we'd be this far behind if you were playing."

I shrugged. "Mostly, I was just planning on getting on my knees and begging them if they won. It'd be super awkward and unpleasant, so they'd probably leave."

"... What?" Yukinoshita boggled, seemingly perplexed, "why would you even do that?"

I gave her a rotten smirk. "A hero is someone willing to sacrifice anything to protect the innocent, even their dignity, right?"

She just stared at me flatly. "No."

"No?" I asked.

"No, we're not doing that." Turning to the other team, Yukinoshita raised her voice. "It's alright if we do a team change now, right?"

Miura shrugged. "Yeah, as long as the score's still the same. Kaminari, Jiro, either of you guys want to sub in?"

Jiro unplugged her ear from her MP13 player. "Nah, I'm good," she said, clearly disinterested. "Denki, you want to have a go?" He shrugged, similarly content to let Hayama and Miura battle it out with us.

Predictably, Bakugo groused about being subbed out. "The hell are you counting me out for? I'm doing fine, it's Yuigahama that keeps screwing me up!"

Briefly, I debated making a point of telling him the truth and setting the record straight, but it was too much effort, so I just shrugged. "They aren't switching, so if we do, it's a cheap tactical advantage. You've gotten them nice and used to power shots, so now I can switch to slices and mess them up. It's just good strategy."

His ego assuaged, Bakugo tossed me the racket. "Tche. Whatever, Hikigaya. Don't screw it up."

"Yeah, yeah. I already knew that without you telling me." With Yukinoshita and I at the fore, things got a little easier. Our cooperation with each other wasn't exactly flawless, but both of us were athletic enough to cover over the gaps, and Yukinoshita's agility in particular made her an excellent back-row defender. Also, even though Bakugo and Yuigahama had lost us quite a bit of ground, they'd managed to tire out Hayama and Miura so that they were less than fresh. Slowly but surely, the score ticked up from 5-6, to 7-7, to 9-8. As I was getting ready to serve the potentially last ball, I served up a pop fly, a high ball that would in theory give someone enough time to send it up, run to the other side of the court to receive it, and potentially return it. A loner's ball, for somebody who didn't have any friends.

Predictably, faced with a high ball like that, Hayama did what came naturally. He squatted, and then jumped up, racket in hand, soaring up into the sky to receive it properly - only to jerk away at the last second, snapping his racket out of the way as he remembered that this was supposed to be a quirkless competition. The joke was on him - I had been using Death Arms to imperceptibly boost my serves by 20% ever since we started! Yeah, it was a little bit cheaty, but so was including Miura when her quirk gave her an innate understanding of trajectories, even when she wasn't throwing light arrows around, and it wasn't like anybody would catch me. "Nice serve," Hayama said to me as he landed, looking a little frustrated. "That was a tricky one to receive. A bet's a bet, so we'll leave the court to you."

I nodded and smiled at him, then quickly jogged over to Totsuka. "Hey. You're recruiting for the Tennis Club, right? Are you going to let them go, just like that?"

Totsuka's eyes widened in realization, and swiftly he limped over to Hayama's team as they were all packing up and getting ready to leave. "Uhm, excuse me?" Totsuka said, his blue eyes sparkling as he ran up with his skinned knees hastily bandaged. "Um, if tennis practice would really be helpful to you guys for the Sports Festival, then - won't you please join the Tennis Club? I'm only doing all this to get strong so I can get new members for the club, and you guys seem pretty nice…"

As Totsuka laid on the androgynous charm and successfully managed to garner two new recruits for the Tennis Club, Yukinoshita stepped up next to me. "An elegant solution. So? Why did you wait until we had already gone through all the trouble of winning a match against them to think of it, instead of suggesting it from the start?"

I sighed. "Everybody likes having an adversary to outsmart. Being offered victory out of the jaws of defeat, letting them see it as a favor that Totsuka gave them rather than something they were owed initially, it makes it more likely that they'll give in to his terms and his leadership later."

"I see." Yukinoshita said with a slightly disapproving tone in her voice. "And the being ready to grovel before them? Was that also part of the plan?"

I shrugged uncomfortably. "Hey, whatever works, right?"

Yukinoshita just stared at me for a second before turning away, moving to congratulate Totsuka on his new club members and to coordinate the shared practice between teams D and E.

Honestly. Some days, I just really didn't understand girls at all.