Chapter Eighty-Six

The hour I spent just messing around with my girlfriend passed far too quickly, and then we all were called back to the beach. Dealing with my Quirks in the water was. . . difficult, to say the least. As I'd discovered before, Electrobody 'anchored' me to a single spot where my flesh shifted to lightning, and I'd kind of figured out how to make it into a kind of handhold or foothold that let me throw myself forward or back, even in deeper water, but that was all I could do with it. Electrification was useless, for obvious reasons, and I hadn't even tried to do anything with Creation because I wasn't going to be using it for the exercise, and I could just ask Momo about how it worked aquatically later.

No, the true standouts here were One-For-All, because that power did everything, and Acid. Mina was far better with it than I was, and an absolute aquatic terror, even if I could just move faster than her with all of my powers, at least in a straight line, that didn't really make me safe. Because it was telekinetically controlled, its thrust vector underwater was pretty much yes, and, while I couldn't get Mina's acceleration with my own paltry abilities, a little bit of experimentation showed I could secrete some acid inside my swim trunks and use that for things like holding myself still, and correctional movements. It felt like I was wearing incredibly tight underwear, but it was as good as I was going to get without having to try and make sense of the 'swimming but not really' movements of OfA's power. Speaking of which, that damn Quirk was so intuitive that, with my need to understand, I centipede dillemma'd myself into flailing about for a solid five minutes, Mina pulling me back to the surface periodically, until I finally decided I'd figure this shit out later.

Now we stumbled back onto the shore, a wide disparity of dispositions on display, from Midoriya's cautious optimism, to Kirashima's unbridled one, to Momo's ready preparadeness, to Bakugo's slightly annoyed confidence.

"I hope you're all feline good about your practice, because now it's time to put to the test and see how you paw-form!" Mandalay cheered, and I suppressed a groan, glancing to Mina.

"How long do you think they worked on that one?" I quietly questioned the pink-skinned girl.

Behind me, Jiro commented, "Too long."

I bit back an unexpected laugh, as the Pussycats continued their explanation, Pixie-Bob informing us, "Now that you kittens have got your feet wet, it's time to sink and swim!"

"Don't you mean sink or swim?" Ochaco questioned.

"Nope!" Tiger boomed.

There was an awkward moment of silence, before Mandalay shot Ragdoll a significant look, the green-haired woman perking up, taking her cue. "See those things over there?" she questioned, pointing with one paw-clad hand towards the submerged building.

"Kinda hard to miss," Asui replied, deadpan.

"Well we're gonna have you kids do some search and rescue! After some disastrous flooding there's trapped 'civilians' in there, you need to get to them be-fur it's too late!" she announced.

As both classes turned, Midoriya already sparking with power, Mandalay quickly added, "Not yet!" causing almost everyone to stumble to a halt. "We're gonna be splitting you up into teams of four, two from each class."

"It'll be random," Tiger stated, "because unless you're on a team like ours, responding to a disaster means working with whoever high-tails it there fast enough."

"There'll be between twelve and twenty-five 'survivors', like our friend here," Mandalay continued, motioning towards the mannequin still planted in the sand. "They'll be in air pockets within the buildings, waiting for rescue, but they're just dolls, so don't feel too bad if you miss them this time," she smiled.

"Yeah, you're just leavin' 'em to drown!" Ragdoll commented, and I could practically see the brunette's annoyance with her green-haired friend.

"Which is why this is an exercise, and not the real deal," the telepath reiterated.

I glanced at the waves, and while part of me was looking forward to the challenge, a larger part of me worried. Not that there was, I don't know, hidden Villains in the depths, that would just be silly. Well, unreasonably paranoid, this entire thing was a little silly. No, as Ragdoll had said, drowning was the threat here, and, with how deep the water looked, and the fact that we'd be not just diving, but in structures, the kind that a panicking, oxygen deprived mind could get trapped in, was cause for concern.

This was not the same as our previous class exercises, and, from the handful of nervous looks I was seeing from a few of the others, like Shoda, the lipless boy, Ida, and Asui, I wasn't the only one that realized this fact. My girlfriend caught my expression and lifted an eyebrow in question.

"Drowning," I murmured, and she sighed, whispering back, "I'm sure they've thought of that." At my flat look, she grimaced, correcting that to, "Mr. Aizawa would."

That. . . actually made sense, but even then, I worried. Waiting to see how it would turn out, the Pros outlined the rules, that each team would have twenty minutes to try and gather as many civilians as we could, and bring them up to the surface. However, each mannequin had a valve that, once it'd 'swam' too much, would open and cause them to start to sink, meaning we couldn't just play catch and release, expecting them to get to the surface on their own and be fine once they were.

It all seemed to make sense, but left the elephant in the room unaddressed, or the whale in this case. "Everyone got that?" Pixie-Bob questioned, after she finished her explanation, the others nodding. "Then it's time for lunch!"

"What!?" most of the gathered students demanded, having keyed themselves up for the exercise, now off-balance and confused.

"Isn't it advised that one wait half an hour after eating before swimming?" Ida questioned, frowning as he pushed up his glasses.

Momo spoke up, "It isn't. There's no scientific backing to that claim, in actuality. It is merely something of an old superstition."

"Besides, you guys still need to have your seminar on underwater navigation!" Ragdoll agreed. "Without it, well, it'd be a Cat-astrophe!"

What?

MHA

Sure enough, after grilling up some fish for us, because of course, the Pussycats gave a surprisingly thorough breakdown on how to keep one's bearings when underwater, and I was reminded that these four were Rescue Heroes, and that this was their field of expertise. Some of it wasn't going to be relevant for this exercise, but still good to know, like how to deal with drowning people, to the point of needing to almost fight them a little, man-handling them to maneuver yourself behind them in a hold that put you in control of them, but keep them from grabbing onto you and preventing you from being able to swim. Quirks made things a little weird, but the base techniques were still good, and could be modified as needed depending on the user and their situation.

Dealing with Mannequins, they'd just be stiff, not getting in our way, but this was training for more than just this exercise.

With the fact that it was a disaster area, we could mess up the landscape a bit if we needed to, breaking windows and such, though we were warned to try and avoid doing anything to the walls, as they were structural, and if we managed to bury ourselves, it'd be an auto-fail. That said, Pixie-Bob would have us out in less than a minute, her dirt creations apparently prowling the lake-bottom to make sure nothing happened to anyone, something that made my girlfriend sent me a completely deserved 'I told you so' look my way over.

Appropriately fed and watered, we once more mustered to find out what our teams would be, the Pussycats not telling us to avoid giving us the ability to plan far ahead.

"All Right! Time for you kittens to burn off that grub with some Cathletics!" Pixie-Bob cheered, our classes responding with a collective, "Yeah!" as we steadfastly ignored the pun.

"Okay then, the first team will be. . . Sero!" the blonde announced, the taping teen nodding and stepping forward.

"Komori!" Tiger growled, the shroom-creator perking up, but also looking a little nervous.

"Fukidashi!" Ragdoll cheered, the speech-balloon headed boy moving forward, the kanji for, 'What do I do?' literally written on his face.

"And Todoroki," Mandalay finished, Sero slumping slightly in relief, to the other two's confusion.

Ragdoll grinned, "You've got twenty minutes before their air runs out, so you better get going, starting. . . Now!"

Todoroki was already running for the beach, commanding, "Follow me!"

The others chased after him, as the thermokinetic started to freeze a path towards the distant buildings. Hitting the ice, Todoroki started to slide, right hand extended out to continue the frozen path, Sero shooting out a strip of tape and catching Shoto's left, jumping onto the ice himself and being dragged along.

The other two students faltered for a moment, unsure, but the mushroom girl jumped right after the two from class A, stumbling, sliding, and almost falling off the narrow path until Sero shot a strip her way, which she caught, and then she started to be dragged along as well. Manga, after hesitating, jumped after, but started to fall behind. From the word bubble of his head came a second, smaller one, reading FAST, that the boy grabbed, popping the second balloon, but the kanji, slanted with little speed lines, remained, causing Manga to rocket forward, catching up first with Komori, then Sero, who reached out an arm and grabbed the boy, dragging himself and the shroomer forward.

Now no longer being held back by the others, Todoroki picked up speed himself, a flash of flame pushing him even faster, though he started to loose control over his ice and so let the fire fade after less than a second. Over the follow moments they got smaller and smaller, until they were practically out of sight, the ice Shoto left behind cracking and splintering, but Todoroki had learned his lesson and made the bit he and the others were on strong enough to support them until they were essentially out of sight.

Which left us.

Waiting.

Squinting.

I could barely make out their tiny forms near the building, before, with a distant crack, a small glacier blossomed into being. The four students, only the bits of color that were their swimwear standing out, talked for a moment, before they jumped into the water, and everything was still.

"Huh. So this is what the students at the Triwizard felt like," I commented, when it became clear nothing else was going to happen.

The glasses-wearing beastman standing a little bit away snorted, then glanced in my direction. "You read Harry Potter?"

I was there when the books were published, I thought, which didn't make me feel old as much as. . . other, instead of admitting that, I nodded, replying, "Loved 'em. You?"

"Hermione's best girl," he pronounced, eying me.

"Absolutely. The ending was terrible," I stated, Mina watching me amusedly.

"Harmony?" he questioned, offering a fist.

"Harmony," I agreed, bumping it.

"Dork," My girlfriend noted.

"Your dork," I countered, which caused her to giggle. "But. . . yeah, this is kinda boring."

Tiger came back from the cooking area, hauling something obvious technological, grunting a little as he placed it down in the sand. Mandalay helped him set it up, while Ragdoll just sat and watched and Pixie-Bob. . . was clearly looking at something, the woman's helmet including a visor, the colors indicating movement but the images such that I couldn't read them backwards and miniaturized.

The device unfolded, arms extended outwards a good fifteen feet in either direction, and the distinct, almost imperceptible hiss of a holographic generator booting up reached my ears. Springing into being, a half-dozen square displays appeared in the air, showing us what was going on. A camera attached to the top of one of the buildings was pointed down, allowing us to see the ice structure Todoroki had made, which had anchored itself against the submerged structure , and even had steps leading down into the water.

Other cameras under the surface showed the four students being dragged down, holding onto tape straps looped around kanji that read HEAVY in dark grey block lettering. The Komori saw something and let go, swimming towards a broken bit of building, Manga glancing back to her, his face reading, 'What?' She pointed into the building, then gave him a thumbs up, before swimming inside.

The other boys went deeper down, Sero trying to shoot out a length of tape, but, underwater, he only got a few feet of distance before it lost momentum, trailing behind him. Doing whatever he did to stop the spool, he cut off the length let it flutter behind him as he took off for a broken window, the camera that panned after him showing a flash of white inside.

Manga broke off as well, Todoroki riding the word all the way down, before letting go and swimming himself through the half-buried front doors of the building itself. However, with all of them gone, the cameras only showed the outsides of the buildings, while glancing at Pixie-Bob, there was some kind of movement on her visor.

"Uh, what's goin' on?" Kirashima asked, pointing at the display.

"We don't want the rest of you to try and be cheetahs," Ragdoll replied, grinning and laughing at her own joke. "No one likes a copycat, after all!"

To the side, Monoma twitched.

Midoriya shrugged, "It's better than nothing, I guess."

"Boring!" Bakugo disagreed, folding his arms. "At least tell us who are teams are so I know who I need to fuckin' carry!"

"Aren't you pawfully impatient!" the green-haired woman taunted, causing the explosive teen to growl, but there was movement on one of the screens and he broke off from glaring at her to watch it, along with the rest of us.

Manga emerged from one building, but the boy was having trouble, trying to drag out two mannequins at a time, something the Pussycats had warned us not to do unless we had the strength to pull it off, something the boy clearly lacked. Thankfully, the fact that the boy's biology was just. . . weird let him still talk, the word BOUYANT forming below him, popping and then slamming into his chest as it rose, shoving him upwards. He lost control of one of his mannequins as he reflexively grabbed for it as it started to slide off him, and he could only watch as he was dragged away, towards the surface at a speed that had me worrying about the boy getting decompression sickness, or 'the bends' as it was commonly known.

It'd been something that Momo had asked about, but we'd been assured that, for 'active' people, anything less than two-hundred feet was fine, and the deepest point of the lake was a hundred and sixty. I almost asked about holding our breaths, until I checked my memories of this world, and, while it was still a concern, the average person was on par with regular divers of my old world, good for around three minutes, with examples abounding of people doing so for far longer, even up to close to an hour. And, tellingly, almost all of the examples I could think of were Heroes. While some of them had differing morphologies, like Asui, that wasn't always the case.

It had been Ochaco who'd asked about the Atlas Quirk, something that half of our class, and most of 1-B, had no idea about. Mandalay had just nodded and said it was, before pausing, looking around, and realizing that most of the people she was training had no clue what that was. Aizawa, who was hanging out nearby, confirmed that such things were normally learned about in our second year, which prompted a quick explanation for everyone else, something that caused a lot of 'Oh, now X makes sense!' reactions from the previously uninformed.

People like Momo and the boy who could make dragon scales had already known, pointing out that what they could do was reliant on that, her for lugging around her creations, and him for fighting as he did without being a power-type like Sato or Midoriya. Bradley himself added that he'd already trained a little with that in mind, as merely exercising didn't count as 'Quirk Use', being a little smug about it.

Even then, I started to worry a little as there was no sight of the others six minutes later. Finally, a flash of flesh and white-dotted red showed the mushroom girl, who lugged out a Mannequin twice her size out into the open water, before, with a gesture, she smothered it with mushrooms that created a visible ripple in the somewhat murky substance. With the extra displacement, though, the Mannequin started to rise, dragging the girl, who was clearly struggling to hold her breath, to the surface, where she breached next to Manga, gasping for air.

The other boy, who was shivering a little from the cold, which was understandable as he was laying on an iceberg, got up from where he'd practically flopped down, and helped drag her onto solid ground, along with her mannequin, and his second one, which bobbed to the surface, but was even now starting to sink. Meanwhile, Sero finally emerged, dragging three mannequins taped together, all of them attached to a harness made from his Quirk that he'd looped around his chest, but he was starting to struggle as well.

From the bottom, there was an explosion of steam, and a humanoid dirt-creature wearing a red jumpsuit was blasted out an unbroken window. It quickly darted back inside, but not before the word 'Villain' could be clearly read in white lettering across its chest, and, as one, both classes turned to look at Pixie-Bob, who glanced over at us. "Kitten's got claws," she shrugged, then ignored us as she went back to controlling her terrakinetic constructs.

A moment later Todoroki rocketed out through the same hole that'd just been made, dragging four mannequins stuck together with ice behind him, ones that immediately started to rise to the surface. Reaching up, the thermokinetic thickened the ice around them, causing the four to rise even faster. As the 'Villain' went after him again, he reached down with his right hand, bracing it with his left, fingers curled together in a way that looked oddly familiar. He concentrated, the 'Villain' closing, and set off another steam explosion, one that shot him upwards in a riot of heated bubbles, shooting up past his own ice creation, as Bakugo yelled, "Oh come on!"

Sero, seeing the quickly rising boy, waved a hand, and Shoto shot his own out, flash-freezing another platform of ice that started to rise behind him. Nodding in thanks, the tape-boy shot out a strand, which was still sticky, somehow, and attached himself to the new construct, riding it up the surface.

Todoroki, slowing somewhat, set off another burst of steam which gave him enough speed to not only breach the surface, but come out entirely, landing a little awkwardly on his feet with a stumble as both class members from 1-B present just stared at the two-toned boy in surprise and disbelief.

"Damn, 1-A really is built different," Tokage muttered, but, as silent as it was on the beach, everyone heard her.

"Not really," Jiro argued. "That's just Todoroki. And Midoriya. And Kaminari. And Yaoyorozu. And Bakugo."

"Why the hell was I last?" the explosive teen demanded.

"Attitude," the jacked girl replied dryly, clearly teasing the other boy, who opened his mouth, paused, then closed it, frowning and giving her a slightly confused look.

Sero reached the surface, taking a deep breath, while Todoroki didn't even seem winded. There wasn't any audio, but the Kanji for 'How?' written on Manga's face was good enough, Shoto replying distractedly with something that made both students look at him with disbelief, while I noticed Pixie-Bob frowning. With a little more ice, Sero was brought up and out, along with his 'civilians', Todoroki's group surfacing a moment later, Manga and Komori helping to bring them onto the ice structure.

After a quick conference, all four dropped back down below the surface, repeating their earlier performances, though with a bit more confidence and care, breaking off into pairs, Sero with Manga while Todoroki went deeper with Komori, pulling out another five 'civilians' in total before a buzzer went off just as they finished dragging them onto the iceburg, indicating they were out of time.

From the depths, a dirt-whale swum up, presenting its back to the students, who, after a moment of indecision, climbed on and were taken back to shore. As they left, dirt-spiders climbed down from the rooftops above them, grabbing the mannequins off the ice, in some cases chipping them out as they tore apart Sero's tape, and the muddy swarm took the fake people back underwater, the submerged camera feeds cutting off, and I was reminded just how bullshit Pixie-Bob's power apparently was, as well as the fact that I absolutely wanted some of that.

And, while she likely wasn't All Might good with her powers, if she was anywhere close, by the time this training camp was over, I'd have a copy of them for myself.

AN: Next Four Chapters are up on , as usual!