Things were not okay. While the others got to sleep in until five, I had to get up at three in the god forsaken morning. Thirty minutes to get ready and eat, thirty minutes to get back to the cliff where the others started yesterday, and one hour to make it through alone.

"Hey, I was promised a baseball bat. Where's my bat?" I complained, Aizawa tossing a bat out of the window of the bus.

"One hour. No powers. Don't die." He told me, driving off while I picked up the bat. Damn, this was actually a really well-made piece of equipment. Definitely not aluminum, too heavy, but light enough I could swing it without too much effort.

Looking down, I realized the clock might already be running, and I knew what I had to do.

"Shit, that means I gotta jump, don't it?"

There was no fear. The trees weren't too far, I could land on the top branches if I was careful.

Leaping off the edge, I grabbed a branch, hearing it snap as I dropped to the ground below, the only thing keeping me from breaking my spine being the other branches breaking my fall.

"Okay, Izuku, you're alone in the woods. You got this."

My words did little to pep myself up, swinging my bat and knocking away a snake that lunged at me, the legless bastard slithering away for now. That was a good sign to start moving if I said so myself.

"God, I miss the city."

Those words were my mantra, running through the woods and trying my best not to hurt the wildlife that attacked me. Boars, I could dodge. Snakes, I could redirect when they sprung at me. But the bear I saw? I just climbed to the top of the trees, moving branch to branch, making sure I was on the shortest path back to camp. No way was I fighting a bear. I wasn't getting packed by nature's most fluffy killer.

Damn, this was actually taking a while, and if I didn't speed it up, I'd get expelled. The only way I could go faster was to make my body lighter, but I didn't know who was watching. If I did, there was every chance I'd be expelled anyway. Why the hell did I say I could do this without my powers?

Shit, no matter what I did, I was straight up screwed. If only I'd kept my mouth shut, I could be asleep right now, or at least just now waking up.

With a scream, I pushed on, jumping faster now, treetop after treetop passing me by faster and faster, forcing myself to move, to keep going.

A loud crack, and the tree was missing from below me, a dirt monster knocking the tree to the ground.

Horror ran through me before anger replaced it. Murder, and no one seemed to care.

"You bastard! That tree was innocent!"

Adjusting myself as I fell, I landed on its backs, hitting its head once, twice, thrice, and I lost count, just hitting it until one more smack brought down, it's head spilling dirt and it's body falling, turning back into just regular old dirt.

That alone wasted five minutes, and I was nowhere close to camp. If a miracle didn't happen, neither would my future here.

A squeal of fear and a tiny piglet hitting my shoe reminded me that I wasn't alone out here, and as I looked at it, I could see its it's front left leg was missing. A freak of nature, abandoned and alone. Well, it had been, picking it up carefully in my arms, it nestled in the crook of my left arm. Nature abandoned it, but I wouldn't.

Nature was all around me, and I was the master of nature. Well, I was the Lorax of nature, speaking for the trees. If I spoke loud enough, surely something would help me, right?

Nothing came, and as I started running again, it wasn't long before I ran into two bears, this time with a fidgeting piglet in one hand and my bat in the other. There was no climbing away or outrunning this beast. If I wanted to survive now, I would have to fight for my life.

The larger of the two rushed at me, forcing me to jump back, hitting its paw with my bat before the second ran at me, scratching my left arm and drawing blood.

I screamed in pain, praying to God my little porky pal didn't get hurt as I adjusted myself, my bat in my right arm now.

The first one tried to smack me with its paw, and as it did, I jumped on its back to avoid it, surfing a wave of fur and deadly fury.

"Mush!" I yelled, smacking the beast on the butt and making it run, riding it with a determined feeling. I was going to make it back to camp. I was going to survive and show everyone I wasn't just some boasting asshole.

"I am a god!" I screamed as the tops of buildings came into view, and maybe I was a boasting asshole. But that wasn't all I was.

The fearsome ball of fluff and murderous intent ran right out to where training was happening, and as a dirt rose up from the ground, stopping it in its tracks, I jumped off, sliding a little but catching myself all the same, banging on my chest with my bleeding arm, giving a victory scream as I looked at Aizawa, who nodded back at me.

I dont know how long it took me, but I did it.

Offering the piglet to Koda, who spoke with the poor thing to calm it, I felt pain shooting up my arm. Right now, my arm was bleeding everywhere, and my chest pounding had done nothing to help it.

"Congratulations, you passed." Aizawa told me, his tone unimpressed, but as he approached me with a first aid kit, I couldn't help but be proud.

The sheer stupidity was astounding, and the odds of a bear ever letting me ride it like that again was like, less than zero. Good thing I didn't need it to work twice.

"Good. Can I have a nap, please?" I asked, my legs buckling as blood loss caught up, falling to my knees before he caught me, guiding me down slowly.

"Easy there, problem child, you'll get that nap, but we're gonna have to take care of you first." He instructed, no longer monotone, his voice was serious and caring.

"Sure thing." I paused, my grin growing slightly. "Hobo-man."

He grumbled a bit, and I wondered if he needed to use that much rubbing alcohol or wrap the bandages so tightly, but then again, I'd never had to wrap up a cut from a bear. Thank God it wasn't an American grizzly or black bear. I'd have gotten packed up and shipped to the afterlife for sure.

Oh man, that was only a temporary fix, getting stuck in the first aid center before they called a doctor to clean the area again, letting him stitch up my arm.

After getting sewn back up and getting rabies shots just in case, the doctor gave me a lecture about how reckless I was.

"You were very lucky. If you had been cut any further, you could have permanently damaged the muscles in your arm. If you truly want to be a hero, you need to be much more careful."

Yawning longer than usual, i knew he was right, but I didn't want to admit it. If I wanted to be anything, I had to actually live to see it.

Instead of replying to what he'd said, I just ignored his point entirely.

"Can I take a nap now? I'm tired."

He sighed and looked disappointed, but in a country that glorified heroes to the extent that they did, I imagine plenty of people were just as reckless when training.

"Don't do anything too extraneous with your arm for the next week and a half or two." He told me while making sure everything was fine before leaving me, Aizawa coming in.

Standing next to the bed, he crossed his arms and looked at me, his emotions hidden.

"That piglet got plenty of snacks and love from your peers, especially the girls and Koda. They really love her."

Man, now that my arm wasn't my main concern, I could think about the piglet. I was glad it was okay, too tired to pretend I didn't care.

"Good. What happened to the bear, though? You guys didn't hurt it, right?"

Pinching his nose, Aizawa pulled the piglet out of his scarf, setting her on the bed where she rolled belly up and fell asleep against my side, my fingers moving to scratch her stomach.

"The bear is fine, but we had to use tranquilizers." He told me, watching as her front right leg twitched in her sleep.

"You didn't have to rescue that piglet or be as gentle as you were with those dangerous animals. Clearly, you care about nature. That's a start for you."

He began to walk away, stopping at for a moment at the door and turning back, looking at me before he kept going.

The piglet squealed and moved closer, rubbing its nose against my side for a moment before getting comfortable and falling back asleep.

"Great. So it's just me and you. What should your name be, huh? I'm gonna skip the puns and obvious names, so how about something more normal? You look like a Lydia. Oh, what about Cindy?" I asked the sleeping slab of pork, who grunted and farted in response.

"Fine, I'll brainstorm some different ideas, get back to you on it." I told her, laying there until I couldn't take it anymore, picking up the sleeping piglet and carrying her outside.

"Ladies and gentlemen, your new god has arrived. It's okay to bow and pray. Just don't expect me to answer your prayers." I called, seeing a blonde kid with a troublemaking smile look back at me in surprise.

"So you're the class 1-As newest member? You don't look like much, but that's to be expected from such an inferior clas-"

I didn't wait for him to finish before I decked him in the schnoz, waking up the piglet who squealed and leaped from my arms, bitting the boys' shirt and tugging at it.

"You're class 1-Bs bottom bitch? Good to know that out of all the second draft losers, you're the biggest loser of them all."

Picking up my pig, I looked back at the boy who was sitting up, holding his nose in pain.

"Who do you think you are you?" He asked, tears and fury in his eyes.

"I'm Izuku Midoriya, and I'm an American. We stand on business all day, every day. So next time you talk shit on my class, I'll crush your ass!" I told him, the pig in my arms grunting and growling at him.

Walking away from the situation, I went to go find my class, my little piggy working her way up, so I had to hold her while she laid back in my arms. I think I already loved her.

The others in his class went to help him up, and I could hear one girl trying to console his anger.

"We all told you to stop this rivalry nonsense. Sooner or later, someone was gonna hit you." She told him as I walked further away towards the sounds of training where coming from

I waved, my pig squealing as she saw some of them, forcing me to set her down before she jumped, running towards the people who had fed her.

"Hey, you guys know that there's another class here? And what's up with that blonde guy? I mean, I'm a jackass, but that dude didn't even wait before calling us inferior. The good news is that I handled it like an adult."

Iida looked proud as he stood upright and put his hand out roboticly, and it was a second before I realized I was supposed to shake his it.

"Good work, Midoriya, you're growing."

"Haha, yeah. I knocked the hell of that little shit, damn near busted his nose." I replied with a grin, watching Iidas' face go blank for a moment before he pinched the bridge of his nose and started explaining why I was wrong for what I did.

"No one talks shit on me or my class. Hate it, love it, we're in this shit together, dawg." I told him, cutting off his lecture and moving to the trees who seemed to be screaming. I couldn't hear it earlier, focused on passing my test, but now I could, listening to them and feeling my connection with them growing. They were giving themselves to me, to protect them, to protect myself.

"There's whispers in the trees. Something is out there, waiting just out of their sight. We need to be ready when it arrives." I told them, turning around as my skin turned a green color.

"Tonight. All I know is that they will come tonight."

The world was spinning, my head pounding, and I felt like I couldn't breathe, but I knew I was, I could feel my chest rising and falling, just in time for my legs to fail me.

My vision swam, people rushing over to me, but their cries were too loud. The trees were begging me to save them, but it was too much, losing consciousness as someone screamed out in terror.