Class 1-A exited the bus after about an hour of travel. Most had assumed that they were just making a rest stop to stretch their limbs and go to the bathroom, but upon being faced with an empty lot (save for a single black car) overlooking the wilderness and no bus carrying 1-B in sight, confusion and suspicion began to spread amongst them.
"You guys don't actually think we stopped here just for you to stretch your legs, do you?" Aizawa spoke up, gaining everyone's attention. Before anyone could respond, both the driver and front passenger doors of the black car opened, and two figures stepped out of the vehicle.
"Your feline fantasies are here! Say meow!" one figure, Mandalay, began in her red cat-meets-magical-girl-themed costume.
"Puuurrrrfectly cute and catlike girls! You can call us the…" the other figure, Pixie-Bob, continued in a blue version of the other's costume.
"Wild, Wild Pussycats!" they emphatically declared together while posing amidst a silent, mostly confused class 1-A and a young boy behind them who looked like he wanted to be literally anywhere else.
"Oh, Uravity!" Pixie-Bob called out while making her way to Ochako after spotting her. "How have ya been since the internship?
"I've been doing alright," she answered with a smile. "It's great to see you all again!"
Pixie-Bob smiled, and then she smirked and bent to whisper to Ochako conspiratorially. "So, how's the manhunt? You've got quite a few lookers in your class. Better snatch 'em up before their eyes wander to a spry, young woman such as myself."
'Young is a bit of a stretch…' Ochako mused internally, not wanting to upset the woman.
"Long time, no see, Eraser," Mandalay greeted the tired teacher with a smile.
"That it has," he nodded before addressing his class. "These are two of the pros you'll be working with at the summer training camp. Uraraka, you interned with them, so you're already familiar. The rest of you, say hello."
"We own this whole stretch of land out there," Mandalay stated after all of the pleasantries, gesturing out to the surrounding forest. "Everything the light touches is part of our kingdom. The summer camp you're staying at is way down there at the base of the mountain."
"Wait, then why did we stop all the way out here?" Toru questioned.
"I'm afraid we both know the answer to that," Tsu dryly replied.
"Nah, that can't be right," Sato nervously chuckled before looking over to Ochako. "Right, Uraraka? They're just messing around, right?"
Ochako did not respond, and she was sweating bullets from having come to the same conclusion and thinking about the week she spent in the Beast's Forest.
"Right, back on the bus then," Sero nodded, taking her silence as all the confirmation he needed to get the hell out of dodge. The rest of the class quickly followed suit and rushed back towards the bus, but Pixie-Bob landed in front of them, cutting off their salvation.
"The current time is 9:30 in the morning. If you're fast about it, you might make it there by noon," Mandalay declared with an entirely too joyful tone in the class' opinion. Just then, Pixie-Bob used her quirk to rupture the dirt they were all standing on and created a landslide down the cliff's edge.
"Kitties who don't make it there by 12:30 don't get any lunch!" Mandalay called out to the collection of dirty and rather annoyed students at the base of the cliff. "Good news, though; since this is private property, you can use your quirks however you want! You've got three full hours to make it through; it should be plenty of time, provided you can survive the Beast's Forest! Good luck!"
Mandalay turned around and strolled back towards Aizawa leaning against the bus while Pixie-Bob happily created and remotely controlled an army of dirt monsters for the class to fight through.
"Don't you think you've got them on a pretty crazy schedule, Eraser?" Mandalay asked her scraggly friend.
"Yeah, that's the idea," he nodded. "We're hoping to get an entire second semester's worth of knowledge in them here. That's going to take an intense amount of work, but the rewards will be worth it."
"I'll say," came a young voice from around the corner of the bus, catching the two pros off guard. Poking their heads around the corner to investigate showed Izuku casually leaning against the other side of the bus, and he gave them a lazy wave when he looked at them. "Sup."
"Midoriya?" Aizawa questioned in utter confusion that was shared by Mandalay. "Why aren't you with your classmates? More importantly, how did you get by me without me noticing?"
"I figured out what was up the minute we got off the bus," Izuku remarked with a shrug. "As for how I got past you, well, you know who trained me."
Mandalay wasn't sure how to react to the green-haired teen. She landed somewhere between incredulous and impressed. Aizawa, on the other hand, was just kicking himself for not expecting something along these lines from his student.
"Well, I'll be on the bus if you need me," Izuku nonchalantly informed and turned around to leave, but he quickly found himself ensnared in his teacher's capture scarf and lifted off of the ground. He could practically feel the glowing, red glare fixed onto his back to ensure he couldn't escape.
"It was worth a shot," he sighed in resignation as Aizawa carried him to the edge and yeeted him down into the woods with his classmates.
"Damn problem child," Aizawa lowly grumbled, but both Mandalay and Pixie-Bob could hear the fondness buried under the scuff.
"Who trained him?" Mandalay questioned, now incredibly curious about the boy. Pixie-Bob was also curious if for no other reason than the kid already being pretty entertaining.
"Heh, you wouldn't believe me if I told you," Aizawa answered with a smirk.
Meanwhile, Class 1-B had the luxury of riding on their bus directly to camp, completely oblivious to the hell their sibling class was enduring. The 20 students calmly and leisurely conversed amongst each other as the initial excitement for the trip died down over the hour since they left UA. One of those students was Yui Kodai, sitting silently and gazing out of the window while Tokage was beside her engaged in a rather spirited debate with their blonde friend in the seat behind them, Pony Tsunotori.
Yui was only half-listening, just following the conversation enough to know that it was about anime but not enough to jump in and contribute at all. Instead, she was content with blankly gazing out of the window and enjoying the calm of the moving landscape as they slowly made their way to their temporary home for the duration of their training camp. She loved window seats; she really loved window seats. As much as her classmates affectionately called her a kuudere, she could become a yandere in milliseconds if window seats were involved.
She was taken away from her window watching when her lizardy friend tapped her shoulder.
"Yo, Yui, settle a debate for us?" the green head asked, and Yui nodded. "Awesome. Alright, say you're fighting that old villain no one has ever been able to catch, Truck-kun, and he gets a lucky shot on you. But check this out, instead of dying, you get isekai'd into a new world, but you're no longer human. Would you rather end up as a spider or a slime?"
Yui took a moment to consider the question, and she placed her chin in her hand in a similar manner to her other green-haired friend while she thought it over.
"Spider," she answered simply, much to the chagrin of the reptile fanatic and the glee of the class weeb.
"Told you, Setsuna!" Pony said with a victorious grin.
"Ugh, why not the slime?" she groused to Yui.
"I wanna shoot webs," she replied just as simply.
"See?" Pony remarked once more to the green head. "It's exactly as I said: bitches love Spider-Man."
"Mm," Yui nodded before returning to her window watching.
Setsuna huffed but conceded nonetheless. The mention of Spider-Man brought her to another thought, though. "Yo, Pony, you've been in Japan for a few years now, right?"
When Pony nodded, she continued. "Now that you're settled in, how different is it here than in America?"
Pony hummed and thought over the question. "Well, America is definitely a lot more open about quirks and quirk use than Japan. Quirk laws are a lot more stringent here. In America, you could just use your tail or even sprout a tree root from your gut to carry your groceries, and no one would really bat an eye. That isn't the case in Japan. Over here, you need a permit to do much of anything with your quirk as well as a license for hero work."
"You don't need a license for hero work in America?" curiously questioned 1-B's mushroom girl, Kinoko Komori, sitting beside her.
"No, you do," Pony answered. "You just don't necessarily need a permit to use your quirk on the job so long as you're licensed for whatever job that is. Quirk use is kinda tied to freedom of expression in America, and that's a whole political can of worms over there. Nothing is ever agreed on when constitutional rights are brought up."
"Not gonna lie, that sounds a little freeing," Setsuna sighed.
"I guess," Pony mused. "It's not always a good thing, though. Vigilantism is a lot harder to pin down over there. Unlicensed hero work is one thing, but using your quirk in self-defense or the defense of others in public won't get you arrested or fined."
She paused, and her hand went to her chin in thought. Unbeknownst to her, several of her classmates had begun listening to the interesting conversation. "Actually, you might get a fine, but it'll probably only be for disorderly conduct if you're being reckless about it."
"Still doesn't sound so bad," Setsuna mused.
Pony shrugged. "It leads some people to do stupid and irresponsible things more often than they should that end up getting themselves and others hurt. It all just comes down to cultural differences, though."
One of the students listening intently to the conversation was the beastly intellectual, Jurota Shishida. His attention was captured when Pony explained the stark differences in philosophy regarding quirks between America and Japan, and his attention was only stoked even further when she revealed how much more laissez-faire both the law and public perception was with quirks in the West. It made him curse just how needlessly restrictive Japanese society was in many regards, quirks being chief among them. How he wished he could throw his posh, well-mannered upbringing aside and embrace his beastly urges without the sort of public scrutiny given to heroes like Hound Dog and Shishido.
'Liberation will be upon Japan soon enough,' he mused to himself.
"On the subject of cultural differences," Pony continued with a slight frown, "I've noticed that people with heteromorphic mutations are treated a bit differently here than over there."
"Personal experience?" Setsuna asked with a frown of her own.
"A little bit," she nodded in response. "It might just be because heavy mutations are a lot more visible in America. There are a ton of "mutant pride" movements that people are mostly fine with, but there isn't a lot of that over here."
While the two friends discussed the differences between Japan and America (for better and for worse), Shishida wasn't the only classmate listening. Shihai Kuroiro was conveniently seated right behind the object of his affections, Komori, so he had also caught the conversation by proximity. However, the pitch black-skinned teen was in deep thought for very different reasons than Shishida.
The portion of the conversation about mutant discrimination in Japan stuck with him. He thought about his older cousin and the tragedy that was her life (if he could indulge in being theatric for a moment). She had a hereditary mutation that was mostly independent of her quirk, but a mutation was a mutation nonetheless, especially in the rural area she lived in since those were notoriously less tolerant of mutations than urban areas. Combine that with the fact that her quirk was very similar to his own, and you get a disgruntled mutant with a "villainous quirk" fighting back against vicious bigotry.
It was only a matter of time before something really bad happened, and when it did, she ran away from home. He hadn't heard anything about her since then. His parents didn't often like to talk about her, but he refused to just forget. She was his cousin, and he had fond memories of hanging out with her when they were younger. He even chose his hero name, Vantablack, to pay homage to her memory.
He'd find her one day, wherever she was.
Many hours later, 1-B had long since made it to the camp and had gotten settled in. 1-A, however, was not so fortunate. After 8 hours of trekking through the Beast's Forest and fighting through scores of giant, ferocious dirt monsters, the absolutely haggard class dragged themselves out of the tree line and fell to the ground at the feet of Pixie-Bob, Mandalay, and Aizawa.
"That took longer than expected," Mandalay mused with a smile.
"You said it would take three hours!" Sero whined while laying bonelessly on the dirt.
"I guess I estimated it based on how long it would take us," Mandalay sheepishly (but not very apologetically) responded.
"I thought it would take even longer!" Pixie-Bob piped up in excitement. "You kids did much better against my dirt monsters than I thought you would. You guys were seriously great."
She focused her gaze on Izuku, Iida, Bakugo, and Shoto in particular and practically purred. "Especially the four of you! It seems you've had quite a bit of experience already."
She licked her lips, and Izuku felt a shiver run up his spine.
"I call dibs on these kittens! I'll groom them myself!" she called out while leaping forward to harass the boys in question.
'…You really ought to be on a list,' Aizawa internally sighed, her antics reminding him way too much of Nemuri when she was feeling especially eager to mess with her students.
Back in Musutafu, Inko felt a disturbance in the force. Her instincts were telling her that her baby was being harassed by a harlot, but when she snapped her gaze away from the cards in her hand, Midnight was still sitting to her left at the table they and three others were at. She narrowed her gaze at the younger woman, and Midnight began to sweat.
"Y-you, um, you okay over there, Inko?" she hesitantly asked the woman that was bearing a threatening aura.
"Someone is getting too fresh with my son," she answered. "I can feel it."
The two other occupants of the poker table, Thirteen and Recovery Girl, both snorted in amusement. Ladies Night was already off to an entertaining start.
When Izuku had managed to free himself from Pixie-Bob's attention by ensuring Bakugo made the ultimate sacrifice in his stead (against his will, of course), he noticed the young boy who had been silently glaring at them ever since they got off the bus that morning.
"Who's that?" he asked Mandalay while pointing at the child in question.
"Oh, this little guy's my cousin's son who lives with us now," she answered. "Don't be shy, Kota, say hi to everyone. You'll be around them for the next week."
Kota remained silent and continued glaring at them all. Izuku stepped forward to the boy to greet him face to face.
"Hey there, my name is Midoriya," he kindly began while bending down and extending his hand to the younger boy. "I'm from the UA High heroics course. It's nice to meet you!"
Kota still didn't respond, and he instead winded up and threw as hard of a punch as he could to Izuku's groin. However, he was taken aback when Izuku calmly and effortlessly caught the punch with his other hand, his smile not dropping for a single moment.
"Kota!" Mandalay shouted in mortified panic, but she stopped in her tracks when Izuku spoke:
"You telegraphed your punch a little too much," Izuku commented, smile still not wavering. "The best nut-shots are like lightning, so a quick jab is the best way to go. Lemme show you."
Izuku, much to the confusion of Kota and the incredulity of everyone watching, proceeded to demonstrate several quick jabs for the boy and encouraged him to emulate the technique. Kota, not really knowing what to do, just absentmindedly acquiesced and threw several sloppy jabs at the air in front of him. Only when Izuku manually adjusted the boy's form to help him with the followthrough of the punch to avoid him hurting himself did Kota snap back to reality, and he threw a much better jab.
"There you go, just like that!" Izuku encouraged, and Kota begrudgingly accepted the praise and threw a few more jabs.
"…Is that Emi's form?" Mandalay asked Aizawa, commenting on how reminiscent Izuku's footwork and striking was of Ms. Joke.
"Yep," Aizawa dryly answered before addressing his exhausted students. "Enough playing around. Get your stuff off the bus."
Izuku nodded to his teacher and turned back to Kota. "You're starting to get the hang of it. Just keep working on it and you'll have a certifiable nutcracker in no time. When your opponent isn't expecting anything, don't give them anything to expect."
Kota turned his glare onto Izuku, but it had considerably less heat to it than it did previously. "Whatever," he muttered before walking away.
After a veritable feast for dinner since it would be the only time the students wouldn't have to cook for themselves, 1-A found themselves enjoying the hot springs afforded to them. One boy, meanwhile, wasn't enjoying the relaxing soak as much as he could have been. Mineta was stuck between a rock and a hard place. On the other side of a mere wooden wall was a glorious wonderland literally ripped from his wildest fantasies. The temptation to manifest destiny was ever so alluring…
However, a quick glance to the other side of the onsen showed the unblinking eyes of his class rep locked onto him. He nervously met the other boy's unsettling, green gaze, and the two stared at each other amidst the light chatter of their classmates. Mineta turned back towards the wall, vaguely hearing the conversations of the girls on the other side, and he turned back to look at Izuku once again, but he was gone.
Surprised, Mineta looked around for where their class rep disappeared to, but he was nowhere in sight. That was until he looked down at the water, and he clearly saw two bright, slitted eyes, one yellow and one green, piercing right through him from under the surface. He gasped and shuffled back against the wall of the pool, drawing the attention of some of the others.
"You okay, dude?" Kaminari asked him.
Mineta glanced back at the water, but the face was gone. When he looked back to the other side of the spring, Izuku was back in his original spot as if he had never moved, and no one else appeared to have noticed if he did.
"Yeah, just… thought I saw something," Mineta mumbled.
"You know," Kirishima began with a thoughtful expression, "I kinda would've expected you to have tried something stupid like climbing the wall over to the girl's side by now."
"Haha, yeah, that would be pretty on-brand for you," Sero agreed, and several others chuckled at the thought.
Mineta forced himself to chuckle along with them, but it was hollower than he would've liked. "I guess I can't exactly fault you for that."
The rest of the time in the onsen went without incident, but Mineta was silent for the majority of it. It had been abundantly clear to him that the bulk of his classmates were expecting him to misbehave in the proximity of their bathing female classmates. Even Midoriya had been silently keeping a tight watch on him the entire time, black magic fuckery and all. As much as he would concede that he deserved it, it bothered him like nobody's business. He had solidified his place as the troublesome comic relief, and that wasn't something that he was going to accept.
When everyone had left the onsen, gotten dressed, and started heading back to the cabins, Mineta made up his mind. He sought out the one person at the center of it all, marching right up to the fluffy mop of green hair before the other boy could enter the cabin.
"Midoriya, can we talk?" he asked him.
Izuku looked down at his classmate, immediately taking note of the resolute face of the shorter boy.
"Sure," he acquiesced, and the two walked a decent distance away from the cabin and out of earshot of everyone but Shoji should he be listening. When they felt they were far enough, Izuku stopped and leaned against a tree before motioning for Mineta to begin.
Mineta took a deep breath and swallowed his reservations completely. "Teach me your ways, Midoriya!"
The two stood in silence for a brief moment while Izuku confusedly regarded him with a quirked eyebrow. "What?"
"Teach me how to be cool!" he squeaked out, all of the nerve he summoned up to speak to Izuku quickly evaporating.
Izuku merely bemusedly scratched his head before chuckling. "Uh, I'm a hero nerd who mutters when he gets excited and writes down information about quirks into notebooks. I'm certain there are others you could go to for advice about being cool before me."
"You don't get it," Mineta muttered, struggling to meet Izuku's gaze. "People like you. People respect you. Our classmates look to you for guidance, even when they don't need it; they just value your opinion. Everything you say carries weight to people, not even just in our class, but in other classes, and even the general public. You had the freaking crowd in the palm of your hand more than once during the sports festival!"
Mineta was growing frustrated with himself the more he spoke. He was just gushing about Izuku in a manner that seemed like a perverse mixture of jealousy and hero worship. He violently shook his head to refocus his thoughts, all the while, Izuku meandered over to a nearby log.
"What's this really about?" Izuku asked and sat down on the log to be at eye-level with Mineta. Mineta noticed that there wasn't any derision, annoyance, or judgement in his voice, just curiosity and concern. He opened his eyes and finally met his friend's(?) gaze.
"You're strong, you're heroic, you're practically adored, and you're respected. I want to be that. I want to be like you," Mineta finally admitted. He looked away again, fully expecting laughter or contempt, but none came. When he opened his eyes again, he only saw Izuku looking back at him with the same concern but with a bit more understanding alongside it. The genuine desire to help that Mineta saw in Izuku's eyes emboldened him to speak again.
"I know I can't be strong like you, or Endeavor, or All Might. I don't want a one-to-one transformation into you, I just want to be respected. I don't want to be laughed at or be the butt of everyone's jokes. I want people to feel safe in my presence when I'm a hero like they already do in yours."
Mineta sighed, and Izuku could hear the weariness in the boy's voice. "I just want people to take my dream seriously for once."
Izuku's silence remained as Mineta finished speaking. He reached over and patted a spot next to him on the log, and Mineta hesitated a moment before sitting down.
"I'm gonna level with you," Izuku began, holding Mineta's rapt attention. "You're already working at a deficit with your stature and appearance. It's challenging to respect someone that I could probably punt 100 meters into the woods."
"Tell me how you really feel," Mineta grumbled.
"With that said," Izuku continued, "You've already carved out a decent lane for yourself as it is. Getting into UA at all is no small feat, and getting into the hero course is another thing entirely. You've managed to stick around this long throughout all the villain attacks, extra shenanigans, and threats of expulsion from Mr. Aizawa. I'd say you're doing well enough in overcoming that deficit."
"Then why is it still so hard to be taken seriously?" Mineta questioned.
"You're a pervert and a bit of a coward," Izuku bluntly answered. When Mineta's face screwed into a frown, Izuku raised an eyebrow. "Did you want me to lie to you?"
"But Kaminari's a pervert, too!" Mineta defended.
"Yeah, but he's normal-sized and conventionally attractive, despite being a bit of a dunce. He can get away with a lot more than you could, or maybe it's more accurate to say that you can get away with a lot less than he could," Izuku responded, and he placed a hand up to silence Mineta's interruption. "Yeah, I know, it isn't fair, and it sucks, but that is the reality of your situation should you choose to make being a pervert such a fundamental aspect of your personality."
Mineta looked down with a contemplative frown, knowing that Izuku wasn't wrong about anything he had said up to that point.
"The good thing is that it's the easier of the two to fix," Izuku spoke again, drawing Mineta's attention. "The other issue is a little trickier to address."
"Being a coward, huh?" Mineta sardonically mused before sighing in defeat. "You're not wrong about me being one."
"You're not always one. You've come through when it mattered most. You just need to make that more of an expectation and less of a fortunate occurrence."
"What do you mean?"
"What I mean is that if you want respect, you need to be less of this," Izuku said while broadly gesturing to Mineta with his hand, "and more of the guy I teamed up with at the entrance exam and the USJ. Be more like the guy who had my back and I had his in the life-and-death fight against the Nomu. Be more like the guy who guarded Tsu with his life when she went down."
Mineta stared at Izuku with bright eyes, soaking in everything the green head said to him. Things were beginning to click. Being respected was possible, and he was already fighting that uphill battle to do it. He had just been putting up hurdles in his path that were even taller than himself. That would change from here on out.
"I want to be respected," Mineta firmly declared. "I'm going to be respected. I'm going to be better than I am right now."
"Put your hand over your heart and say it with your chest," Izuku encouraged, and Mineta placed his right hand over a spot on the right side of his chest.
"That's… not your heart," Izuku confusedly noted.
"No, it is," Mineta replied. "I have isolated dextrocardia, so my heart faces the right side of my chest instead of the left."
"Fascinating," Izuku mumbled before shaking himself out of it and refocusing on the topic at hand. "Speak it into existence and then become it. Use this training camp to start being that goddamn hero that you've always dreamed of becoming. Be the man that's deserving of respect."
"You bet your ass I will!" he declared while popping up from the log and pumping his fist in the air. He thanked the taller boy profusely for the talk and turned to head back to the cabin, but he stopped when another thought occurred to him.
"Hey, Midoriya?" he began, turning back to face the other boy. "Are we friends?"
Izuku raised an eyebrow at the question. "Were you under the impression that we weren't?"
Mineta smiled, and it was one of the first genuine, non-lecherous or devious smiles Izuku had seen from the boy. "I'm glad to hear it."
With that, he scampered back off to the cabin, newly invigorated with singleminded determination to prove himself to be the hero he always dreamed of being. Izuku, meanwhile, exhaled and relaxed on the log until he heard the light rustle of foliage on the forest floor.
"You did a good job with that," came the gruff voice of his perpetually tired homeroom teacher as he stepped out from behind one of the trees.
"How long have you been listening?" Izuku questioned, wondering exactly when the man had popped up and why he hadn't noticed his arrival when he did.
"I heard the whole thing," he dryly answered, and he smirked at Izuku's incredulous expression. "You're good, but I'm still a pro."
"Guess we're 1 and 1, then," Izuku joked. "I wonder who will get the tiebreaker."
"Don't get cocky," the teacher warned. "You slipped by me once; it won't happen again."
"I will gladly accept the challenge."
"Good. Get to the cabin and get to sleep. Training camp starts in earnest at the crack of dawn."
Indeed, training camp did begin at the crack of dawn. 1-A sluggishly trudged to a clearing in their PE uniforms only to immediately snap to attention when Aizawa addressed them.
"Today, we begin your training to improve your strength," he began. "Our goal is to exponentially increase your skills so that you'll have no trouble receiving a provisional license when the time comes. This will allow you to face the ever-festering dangers lurking in the darkness without any legal issue."
Aizawa pulled out a softball and tossed it to Bakugo. "Give that a throw for me."
Bakugo nodded and rotated his shoulder before doing as he was instructed with a magnificent boom.
"709.6 meters," Aizawa read, and Bakugo smirked.
"…It's an improvement from the 705.2 meters you started with at the fitness test, I guess," he finished, and Bakugo's eyes went wide, as did the eyes of most of the class at the minimal improvement.
"You've had a single semester at UA, and you've all definitely improved after your experiences, but for most of you, those improvements have been limited to mental acuity and technical skill. Your quirks haven't fundamentally grown much stronger since the beginning, though."
Aizawa's eye twitched when he saw Izuku begin to raise his hand. "Like I said, most of you."
Izuku's hand fell back down, and Aizawa gave his students a positively vile grin. "We'll be training you into the ground and making your quirks as powerful as can be before the week is out. It'll be the most grueling training you've ever gone through, so you'd better hope you survive.
1-A collectively paled, and they just hoped that another bond of shared suffering could be forged from the coming torture and added to their already plentiful collection.
Izuku, Aizawa, and Pixie-Bob stood a good distance away from the others, tipping Izuku off that his training would both require a lot of space and likely get a little hectic. Seeing the mildly threatening grin Pixie-Bob was sporting only confirmed his suspicions.
"Your quirk is incredibly multifaceted, so it wouldn't be feasible nor make sense to focus on several things at once and expect to make decent progress on any one thing," Aizawa began. "With that in mind, you'll be focusing on the one aspect that I've noticed you've been neglecting the most, and that's the pyrokinetic nature of your quirk."
Izuku's eyes widened at that, but he said nothing and allowed his teacher to continue. "From what I've been able to see, you fight like an amalgamation of everyone who has trained or sparred with you in some fashion or another. Joke told me about the sparring you did with Mirko, and your mother mentioned that you gained inspiration from and sparred with Gran Torino. Is that the extent of it?"
Upon Izuku's nod of confirmation, Aizawa continued. "That's all well and good, especially when developing your own unique fighting style, but one thing stands out between all 4 of those people: none of them have fire quirks of their own, so they can't show you how to properly wield one. Hence, you've been slacking on using your base flames as the weapon they are in lieu of the other flames. Since I don't have a fire quirk and Todoroki is busy, you'll be playing around with your base flames and getting a better feel for ranged combat."
"And that's where I come in!" Pixie-Bob cheered as multiple dirt monsters of various sizes rose from the ground around them. "You'll be blasting these babies with all the firepower you've got, but you can't use anything else."
"Exactly," Aizawa confirmed. "No green, red, yellow, orange, purple, or pink. Just your Kaleidoscopic Fire."
Izuku nodded and activated his quirk, bathing himself in the colorful blaze.
"I'll leave you to it," he said before strolling away to greet the incoming 1-B.
"You ready?" Pixie-Bob asked the boy who had instinctively lowered into a fighting stance.
"Give me everything you've got," Izuku replied with a determined nod.
"You'll regret that," she purred before the dirt monsters attacked and converged onto him.
Izuku's eyes briefly glowed a bright green as the flames of his quirk flared, and he sent a wave of colorful fire at a group of the smaller, faster dirt monsters. Predictably, they quickly crumbled at the attack, but even more were nearly upon him. He swung his other arm back to send a larger wave of fire at the newest group, and he dodged to the left to avoid a hit from one of the larger monsters. They were slower than the others, but he doubted they would go down as easily.
After engulfing his hands with fire, he peppered another wave of the swarming little creatures with a spatter of fireballs before they could overwhelm him, quickly pivoting to blast an approaching giant in the face with a heavier wave of fire to subdue it. Just as he expected, it didn't go down right away, and even more giants were approaching from his flanks. He dodged another strike from the beast in front of him and quickly scaled the monster until he sat atop its head, much to the amusement of Pixie-Bob on the ground. Izuku stabbed his hands into the monster and unleashed another wave of fire directly within it, taking it down with an inhuman wail as colorful fire shot out of its mouth and eyeholes.
Izuku did not stop for a moment, though, as he launched back into the fray to tangle with the other hulking dirt monsters. He concentrated a blast of fire on his palm before igniting and shooting it out, mimicking one of Bakugo's explosions on a much weaker scale to stun the beast while he backhanded a smaller creature that tried to sneak up on him with his other arm. Returning to the stunned beast, he shoved his arms into its snout and unleashed another large wave of fire directly within the creature to disperse it.
It was at that moment with his arms outstretched that he noticed something peculiar. There was a slit going down his forearm starting a little past his wrist, and he could fairly see wisps of smoke wafting out of it. An inspection of his other arm showed an identical slit with smoke seeping out of it, as well. He really wished he had Melissa run a scan on his body when they had the chance.
"Never take your eyes off your opponent!" Pixie-Bob shouted as a swarm of smaller creatures surrounded him and made to strike.
Almost immediately, Izuku hunched and stretched his arms out to either side before spinning in place, unleashing the full breadth of his base flames all the while in a visually stunning, rotating pillar of fire that swiftly eliminated the attacking horde. When he began to slow down, he wreathed his right arm in flames and slammed it into a final giant, unleashing another explosion into it all the while before he hit it with a final wave of fire to dispel it.
"Very nicely done, kitten," Pixie-Bob commented with a small applause. "Barring that one distraction, you handled yourself really well. Now, time for the 2nd wave!"
Izuku exhaled a bit of smoke before reentering a fighting stance. "Bring it."
After a long day of grueling training, the 40 exhausted students were tasked with cooking their own dinner, to which they were given curry to make. Only Iida realized that it was another part of their training, as rescuing civilians encompassed catering to their physical and emotional needs, so cooking a decent meal from scratch while exhausted would go a long way in that regard. Izuku didn't really get the logic, but he went along with it, nonetheless.
When the food was cooked and most were scarfing it down like there was no tomorrow, Mandalay was calling out for Kota to come eat, but he was nowhere in sight. Taking notice, Izuku made a plate for him and told the pro that he'd follow the boy's footsteps and bring him the food, to which she was grateful for. It didn't take very long for Izuku to track him down, but he was curious as to why the boy came up to a cliff overlooking the forest.
"Hey, you ran off without eating," Izuku said, startling the boy. "Mandalay was worried about you."
Kota scowled at the intrusion of the hero student in his secret hideout. "Not hungry. Get lost."
As he said that, the boy's stomach growled in protest, nullifying his rebuke of the food and causing Izuku to chuckle.
"The stomach never lies," Izuku quipped, much to Kota's rising agitation. "I brought you some curry."
"I don't want it!" he refused again. "How did you even find this place?"
"Oh, um, I followed your footsteps," Izuku sheepishly admitted. "Sorry if I'm intruding on a special place you use to retreat from everything."
That took Kota off guard. His young brain thought having a special hideout was novel to him, and he didn't think others were familiar with the concept. "You have a hideout, too?"
"Well, not exactly," Izuku began with a scratch to the back of his head. "I didn't have a hideout or retreat per se, but I did have my mom to comfort me whenever I was feeling down or inadequate."
This was not the right thing to say, as Kota immediately tensed and his face twisted into one of anger. Izuku, not noticing, continued on.
"Granted, her training was often what made me feel down and inadequate, but she was still always there to-"
"SHUT UP!" Kota shouted, and Izuku was taken aback by the outburst. "First, you bunch of idiots come up here to practice with your stupid quirks for your stupid dreams! Stupid names like 'hero' or 'villain' to just show off your powers and kill each other! And now you're just here to brag about having parents to care about you! It must be freaking nice!"
Izuku was floored by the outburst, and he immediately realized that he accidentally hit a sore spot with the mention of his mother. He tried to apologize for upsetting him, but Kota was having none of it.
"GET OUT OF HERE!" the boy yelled with tears streaming down his face. "Go away with your stupid dreams and alive parents! I hope they're ready for when you die and leave them all alone!"
Izuku froze when the last sentence was uttered, and even Kota realized that he might have crossed a line, but he didn't back down and kept his furious, tearful glare on the teen. Izuku blankly looked down at the plate of curry, and he placed the plate down onto the ground in front of him.
"I'm sorry," he softly spoke before turning and vacating the area, leaving Kota alone with the plate of food.
"Ugh, I hate this. It's so not cute!" Toga whined while fitting her mask on.
"It was engineered for the black market from what I hear," the somewhat robotic voice of Mustard came from his gas mask. "You should be more concerned about whether they work, not if they look pretty."
"I've heard that Detnerat makes support equipment to sell on the black market for villains and vigilantes so that they can field test them," Spinner spoke up as he approached the convening group.
"Don't believe everything you read on the internet," was the swift rebuke of another arrival, Kusari. "How much longer are we waiting?"
"'Till everyone gets here," Dabi smoothly answered, and he saw the approaching forms of Magne, Muscular, and Moonfish. "That makes 8 of us, we're just waiting on two more and the science project."
"I can't wait to see the Worthy Duo for myself," Spinner just about gushed.
"I can't wait to kill some stuck-up UA kids," Mustard gleefully added.
"I'm with Shorty, I just wanna break someone," Muscular growled from behind his mask and cloak. "Let me loose, already! I'm already pumped up!"
"Meeeeaaaaat!" Moonfish growled in excitement.
"Shut your mouths, you murderous psychopaths," Dabi dismissed.
"Pot, meet Kettle?" Magne snorted.
"We wait until everyone gets here before we strike," Dabi continued, ignoring the jab from Magne. "Then, we rip their precious sense of peace away from them and show them whose hands their lives are truly resting within."
Toga, despite the discomfort of her new gear, was excited for the events to come. She'd get to see her Izuku again, and she could make him all cute and bloody again!
And then, he could help her, finally rescuing her from the excruciating pain of existence or killing her so that she couldn't hurt anyone else.
Wait, what? She didn't want to die.
Yes, she did.
She wanted to live freely for once. She wanted to enjoy life without restrictions or judgement. She couldn't do that if she was dead.
And that was for the best.
No, she'll find Izuku and spread her love to him, and they'll live happily ever after.
End her suffering.
The boot camp that was their training continued on through the next day, and it was just as grueling as the day prior. Izuku was again faced with taking on an army of dirt creatures using only his base flames, but he was also tasked with blasting and evading projectiles that were lobbed at him by Reiko Yanagi and her quirk. On top of that, the projectiles would periodically balloon in size just as they were about to hit him or shrink in order to pepper him with hits and distract him from defending against another attack. He knew it was courtesy of Yui, as she sent him a thumbs-up ever so often as encouragement to continue defending.
The long day eventually came to an end, and after everyone ate, the Pussycats thrusted everyone into a wondrous test of courage between the classes… well, everyone excluding those who failed their finals and required remedial lessons. The five from 1-A and Monoma were spirited away to an empty classroom to have their lessons in lieu of participating in the game.
When the rules were explained, 1-A was divided into pairs, but the odd number of students left Izuku without a partner. He didn't particularly mind, as that meant that he could spend more time brainstorming on how he would manage to sneak up on Mr. Aizawa in order to win the tiebreaker. Just as well, now that he was sitting and not preoccupied with training, he could also think about his interaction with Kota the night prior. He hadn't seen the boy all day, so he assumed that he spent it alone at his hideout. He could gather from his outburst that Kota didn't have his parents anymore, and his clear disdain for heroes and them leaving the people that care about them didn't paint a pretty picture.
He hoped the boy was okay; suffering alone wasn't healthy and could become really self-destructive if left unchecked. His mother was very clear with him about that.
He sat quietly against a tree while waiting for his turn to go, but in the distance, he noticed a plume of smoke lifting into the night sky. Pixie-Bob sniffed the air and mentioned a foul smell coming from the direction of the smoke. Some of the students were speculating about the cause of it, but their musings were cut short when Pixie-Bob emitted a pink glow and was yoinked into the tree line. Izuku's alarm grew when a figure stepped out of the trees with a large block firmly planted onto Pixie-Bob's skull.
Whatever one-liner the villain said went ignored by Izuku as he hopped to his feet, his mind only on one thing: Kota. The kid was alone somewhere in the forest, and he didn't wait for any orders or provocation to dart into the forest in search of him. Tiger and Mandalay could take on the villains, and his classmates were more than capable of handling themselves if worst came to worst. He trusted them with everything he had.
Kota, on the other hand, would not be able to defend himself against a villain attack, and he was liable to do something stupid in his state of mind. Izuku would find him; he'd make damn sure of it.
Meanwhile, Magne and Spinner theatrically stepped into the clearing to address the assembled hero students and one half of the Pussycats.
"How are you all this evening, UA High School?" Spinner began his grandiose speech to his captive audience. "We are the Vanguard Action Squad of the League of Villains!"
"How long have you been prepping this speech?" Magne joked.
"Too damn long!" Spinner cackled, then his eyes landed on Iida amongst the group of students. "You there! I recognize you! You're the one self-righteous brat that attacked Stain in Hosu! Where's the Worthy Duo?! I wanna meet them!"
The practically frothing gecko-man weirded out both the heroes present and Magne beside him.
"Enough of this!" the enraged Tiger shouted. "You criminals are just followers of a dogmatic murderer like Stain! That woman beneath you is a hero who's saved countless lives and is giving her all to push these young heroes to reach their full potential. She's looking for a mate but is otherwise content with her life."
Tiger's tone progressively transformed into a feral growl as he spoke, and it was reaching its apex. "What gives you the right to cut such a happy life short?!
"Didn't anyone ever tell you that it's not a hero's job to be happy?!" Spinner maniacally argued back. "Humanity is for civilians! Heroes are supposed to be above that!"
"This isn't some fantasy world from a comic, you maniac!" Tiger shot back. "That's not how real life works!"
"Oh, I'll show you how life really works, you fake!" Spinner spat, drawing two swords from their sheaths on his back. He had initially wanted to repair his giant sword after it was damaged against those Yakuza weirdos, but Tomura smacked him across the head and told him to stop being difficult and just use regular swords.
"Tiger, I've informed everyone of the situation," Mandalay quickly reported. "Trust the safety of the other students to Ragdoll. You and I will stay here and hold them back while the students return to camp. Class rep, you're in charge on the way there. Do NOT engage anyone, you got it?"
There was no response, and Mandalay turned her gaze back to the students in irritation, but the person she was looking for was nowhere to be found.
"Midoriya?" Iida frantically looked around for his friend and class rep. "Where did he go? Did anyone see him leave? Was he taken?"
That possibility put Mandalay even further on edge. "Shit! Iida, you're in charge, then. Get everyone back to camp!"
Iida was hesitant to leave without knowing the whereabouts of his friend, but he shakily nodded and complied, nonetheless.
Kota looked out at the scene; it wasn't pretty. Blue fires raged across the forest that was already blanketed by a strange, pink fog. Kota had no idea what was happening, but it didn't look good, and as much as he resented living with 4 pro heroes, he still couldn't help but worry about their safety, especially Mandalay's.
"Well, would you look at that," an unfamiliar voice came from behind him accompanied by heavy footsteps. Kota turned to see a massive man in a cloak and blank mask approaching him.
"I came up here to scout for a nice vantage point, and here I find someone who isn't on our list," he continued, the joy dripping from his voice in a manner that made the young boy sick. "How fantastic! I get to play around a little bit before it's back to business."
Kota was petrified in the presence of the obvious villain, and the villain seemed to realize and revel in it if his increasingly dark chuckling was any indication.
"By the way, I like that hat," the man said before lifting up his mask to expose a horrifyingly familiar face to Kota. "I'll trade you for this dumbass mask they gave me."
Standing before Kota with an insane grin and fake left eye was Muscular, the villain who slaughtered his parents. Muscle fibers began to grow en masse over his already beefy arms as he stalked toward the positively terrified boy. Kota wanted to run; he wanted so badly to get as far away from the man as possible, but he just couldn't move. His fight-or-flight response had clearly abandoned flight and opted for the third option, freezing, in its stead.
Strangely, though, fighting hadn't been abandoned completely. As Kota watched the hulking serial killer approach him, he felt palpable fear, but he also felt anger. In fact, he felt more anger in this single moment than he had ever felt in his short life. The man who took his parents away from him was standing right in front of him looking to do the same to him.
He wouldn't have that.
"You…" Kota growled through tears. "You killed my parents!"
"Hm?" Muscular stopped his advance and gazed at the boy quizzically. "You're gonna have to be a little more specific than that, kid."
"Water Hose! You killed them!" Kota shouted, now enraged that his parents were purely numbers to the man who killed them.
Muscular stood in visible thought for a moment, periodically gazing down at the boy as if he was trying to match a face. Then, a lightbulb shined above his head, and he remembered the duo. "Oh, those two! I remember, now. That was a fun day!"
He turned his gaze back to a positively apoplectic Kota and shrugged. "For what it's worth, I don't hold any hard feelings over my eye. I was doing what I wanted to by killing people, and your parents were just doing what they wanted to by trying to stop me. It just so happened that my desire was stronger than their's. It's nobody's fault."
That was Kota's breaking point, and like lightning, the boy threw a jab faster than Muscular could track. A simple jab at the air in front of him wouldn't ordinarily accomplish anything, but the jet of water that shot out of his fist and slammed into Muscular's crotch certainly did.
The wail of pain that escaped Muscular's lips was music to the boy's ears. He reveled in the agony the man was experiencing, and he capitalized on the moment by throwing more jabs with water jetting out of them, smacking into various places on the crouching Muscular and doing even more damage. Muscular, meanwhile, felt like he got shot in the dick by a beanbag gun, and then he felt like he was being pelted by them even further.
It was truly pissing him off.
"ENOUGH!" he shouted, and Kota felt all of the confidence and catharsis he had just been reveling in vanish in an instant. "I'll tear you apart you little, fucking cum rag!"
Muscular launched toward the boy, intent on pulverizing him into a fine mist, but a flash of yellow entered his vision before a foot slammed into the left side of his face. Kota was then spirited away by the yellow flash and placed on the other side of the cliff nearest to the path to take him back down the mountain. The boy looked up at the figure who saved him, and he saw Izuku standing over him in a golden blanket of fire. He didn't know if the utter contempt on the teen's face as he stared down Muscular was comforting or frightening.
"Oh, wow, ain't this convenient," Muscular mused. "Our target just shows up right in front of me."
"You piece of shit," Izuku spat, ignoring whatever the man had said. "Your voices carry on this mountain. I heard everything. You murdered this boy's parents and then have the fucking nerve to say that you hold no hard feelings and that it wasn't anyone's fault?!"
"Heh, you seem to feel pretty strongly about it," Muscular said with a vicious grin. "Tell you what, the little shit over there pissed me off, so I'm gonna go all out from the start. If you're feeling so froggy, then jump!"
He tore off his cloak as his muscles began to bulge even more, and his body eventually ballooned in musculature and burst through the tank top he was wearing. Kota was petrified at the sight once again, but Izuku's gaze only narrowed.
"Kota," he addressed the boy with steel in his voice, making the boy jump in fright. "I can't ask you to head back to camp. It'll be too dangerous with the villains running around. I need you to get a good distance away from this peak and stay out of sight, though. I'll find you when I've put him down."
"Y-you're insane!" Kota cried. "You can't fight him! You'll die!"
"It isn't a matter of whether or not I can do it," Izuku simply replied. "As a hero, it's my job to risk my life to turn promises into reality in order to help people who need saving. I'm here now, and I'm going to protect you to my dying breath if necessary. That's what heroes do."
"NO!" Kota cried, but he was quickly ensnared by a thin, purple flame and tossed away from the immediate area.
"Enough chitchat! Show me your blood!" Muscular cackled as he bounded toward Izuku with a grotesquely muscled arm ready to strike.