Inside the dorms, in the common room, Mirio and Tamaki were already eating when Raiden and Nejire arrived.
Mirio had not exaggerated when he said he brought pizza.
There were five boxes stacked on the table, all of them family size, with different flavors spread around like a feast prepared for starving people. At this point, there was probably enough pizza left for breakfast the next morning too.
Not that any of them would complain about that.
The warm smell of melted cheese and baked dough filled the entire room, creating a surprisingly relaxing atmosphere after such an exhausting day.
"Ooh, you're already here," exclaimed Mirio as he waved at Raiden while holding two slices at once. "You look tired."
"Yeah, the truth is that I'm a little bit," replied Raiden with a sigh as he dropped himself onto the couch. "I guess it's the same for you."
"Yeah… a little," admitted Mirio, though he still carried his usual smile. "Things have been rough lately. Crime is increasing more and more. There are a lot of people trying to use their Quirks without restrictions now."
He leaned back slightly after speaking, the exhaustion beneath his cheerful personality becoming noticeable for a brief moment.
"Me toooo," complained Nejire dramatically as she fell sideways onto another couch. "I feel like I never rest anymore. Only today felt a little calmer, and tomorrow we have patrols again. I want a free weekend."
"Me too," muttered Tamaki quietly while continuing to eat his pizza. "I want free time…"
"You just want to go on a date, isn't that right?" Raiden immediately responded with a teasing grin.
Tamaki froze for a second before slowly nodding while continuing to eat in silence, earning laughter from the others.
Lately, Tamaki had changed a little. He was still timid, of course, especially around strangers, but when he was with the three of them, he looked much more relaxed now. Comfortable, even.
It was a subtle change, but noticeable.
After a moment of silence filled only by eating and the occasional sound of pizza boxes opening, Tamaki suddenly looked toward Raiden again.
"What's the result of your method, Raiden?" he asked quietly.
At those words, the atmosphere shifted slightly. Even Mirio and Nejire looked more attentive now.
"The truth?" Raiden leaned back into the couch before continuing. "It worked. Almost instant results."
That immediately caught their full attention.
"We can speed up training time by a lot. Our hypothesis was right," Raiden explained. "The body adapts faster if we force intense Quirk usage and immediately accelerate recovery afterward."
"Hahahahaha! Excellent!" Mirio exclaimed loudly, nearly dropping his pizza from excitement. "So what do you think? Can we implement it on ourselves too?"
At the same time, Tamaki and Nejire both looked at Raiden with clear interest.
"We can," Raiden answered after a brief pause. "Honestly, I think it's something we should start doing regularly."
He crossed his arms while thinking more seriously about it.
"Our growth probably won't be as explosive as the first years' because our Quirks and bodies are already much more developed," he continued. "But even then, I think we can still benefit greatly from it. If we can speed up the body's regeneration and adaptation process, we should be able to grow stronger faster."
A small smile appeared on his face.
"And maybe… we could even unlock completely new ways of using our Quirks."
That possibility alone was enough to make the room quiet for a moment.
After all, the four of them were already considered monsters among students.
If they evolved even further…
"Ne ne, so when do we start this extra training?" Nejire asked immediately, now fully energized again despite complaining seconds earlier.
"It could be tomorrow morning," Raiden answered. "After that, we'll probably need to adjust the schedule. Some days will be impossible because of patrols and agency work."
He grabbed a slice of pizza while continuing.
"But weekends should work. The shifts are usually shorter, so we can use that time for this kind of training."
At that moment, the four of them exchanged glances.
Exhausted as they were…
None of them rejected the idea.
The reunion lasted for quite a while after that.
At some point, Mirio put a movie on the TV in the common room, though none of them paid too much attention to it in the end. Between the exhaustion from patrols, training, mentoring the first years, and their own agency work, the four of them were already running almost entirely on habit and stubbornness.
Even so, it was comfortable.
The kind of silence that only existed between people who had spent years together.
Nejire ended up half lying across the couch while eating the last slices of pizza, Mirio kept commenting loudly about scenes in the movie even when no one answered him anymore, and Tamaki slowly drifted asleep while still holding a mug of hot chocolate in his hands.
Raiden himself did not even remember the moment he closed his eyes.
Eventually, all four of them ended up asleep in the common room.
The TV continued playing quietly in the background while the lights of the dorms dimmed during the late hours of the night.
Then, little by little, they woke up one after another sometime past midnight.
None of them wanted to wake the rest of the dormitory, so without speaking too much, each one quietly returned to their own room as they regained consciousness.
The next day, after finishing the patrols they had been assigned around the city, the four reunited once again inside one of U.A.'s training facilities.
Not just any training room.
The biggest one in the entire academy.
At that point, calling it a "training room" almost felt wrong. It was more similar to a stadium designed for full-scale combat exercises. The place was enormous, with reinforced walls, shattered marks from previous battles, and enough open space for even giant-type Quirks to fight freely without restrictions.
In this occasion, the four stood in opposite directions of the arena, each one separated by dozens of meters from the others.
Their method of training would be very different from the one Raiden used with the first years.
They were not going to simply push their Quirks to exhaustion through repetitive strain.
No.
Their training focused on something far more dangerous.
Combat adaptation.
Precision under pressure.
The absolute mastery of their powers while facing opponents capable of truly resisting them.
For a few seconds, none of them moved.
They simply stared at each other from across the stadium.
Then suddenly—
Mirio disappeared from sight.
At almost the exact same instant, the others moved as well.
Nejire released a concentrated spiral wave of energy beneath her feet, the force propelling her forward so violently that her body vanished into a blur.
At the same time, Tamaki's legs transformed instantly. The lower half of his body shifted into the powerful limbs of a grasshopper, thickened with muscle and reinforced for explosive mobility.
In the next second, he too disappeared from sight.
Mewtwo, on the other hand, activated Agility while simultaneously using his telekinesis to propel his own body forward.
The result was almost terrifying.
Rather than movement, it looked closer to teleportation.
The four of them crossed the massive distance of the arena in an instant and collided directly in the center of the stadium.
The clash exploded like thunder.
Mewtwo activated Mega Punch and Iron Tail simultaneously.
One fist moved toward Nejire with overwhelming force while his glowing white tail whipped toward Tamaki fast enough to distort the air itself.
At the same time, the others counterattacked.
Tamaki blocked Mewtwo's tail using one transformed leg now reinforced with thick scales and enlarged muscles, the impact creating a violent shockwave around him.
With one arm, he launched an attack toward Nejire while the other attempted to grab Mirio, who had phased through the incoming strikes and tried to land simultaneous blows on both Tamaki and Mewtwo.
Nejire, meanwhile, coated her body in a dense armor of spiraling energy.
The glowing aura wrapped around her like a second skin, allowing her to withstand and counter both Mewtwo's and Tamaki's attacks at the same time.
At the same moment, she shifted her body slightly and protected her stomach from Mirio's incoming strike as he phased through the battlefield with absurd precision.
Mewtwo defended himself similarly.
His eyes glowed brightly as his telekinesis activated at maximum efficiency, stopping Mirio's punch only a couple of inches before reaching his face.
Still—
Even though every attack had technically been blocked or canceled out, the sheer force generated by the collision of the four strongest students in U.A. was enough to crack the center of the arena beneath them.
A massive fracture spread outward across the ground in violent waves.
The entire stadium trembled from the impact.
They did not stop there.
On the contrary, the moment the first clash ended, the four of them continued pushing forward without hesitation, using their abilities at maximum output and striking against each other again and again.
The purpose of this training was simple.
To force their Quirks to adapt.
To force their bodies to evolve while fighting against the strongest opponents they could possibly face without truly trying to kill one another.
Every movement carried absurd force behind it.
Every exchange pushed their reactions, stamina, and control further than normal combat ever could.
Nejire generated spiraling energy around her body continuously, the waves rotating faster and faster until they formed something similar to a glowing sphere surrounding her entirely.
It was a defensive application she had copied from Mewtwo's Barrier technique after seeing him use it countless times during their battles and patrols together.
The spirals rotated with enough density to deflect impacts while also softening incoming blows, making her surprisingly difficult to damage directly.
Mewtwo himself mirrored the same principle.
Psychic energy expanded around his body in the form of a translucent barrier, protecting him from most frontal attacks and allowing him to focus almost entirely on Mirio, whose fighting style was by far the most dangerous in close combat.
Unlike the others, Mirio did not rely on overwhelming force.
He relied on timing.
One mistake against Permeation was enough to lose the exchange instantly.
Tamaki, meanwhile, transformed even further.
Sturdy scales covered large portions of his body, shining between dark gold and crimson under the artificial lights of the stadium. The armor-like hide reinforced his muscles and greatly increased his durability.
But that was not all.
One of his arms transformed into something resembling the claw of a massive crab.
The limb grew bulky and dense, layered with a hard shell strong enough to distort the air every time it moved.
Then Tamaki pressed the giant claw directly against Mewtwo's barrier.
Click.
The claw closed.
At that exact moment, sparks exploded from the point of contact and a violent shockwave burst outward.
To Mewtwo's surprise, the attack was strong enough to shatter the barrier completely.
The psychic shield cracked apart in glowing fragments, and the force behind the strike sent him flying backward across the arena.
The barrier absorbed the damage itself, preventing the blow from reaching his body directly, but the simple fact that Tamaki had managed to break through it at all was impressive.
The resulting shockwave spread through the center of the battlefield and sent both Mirio and Nejire away as well.
Mewtwo spun through the air for a brief moment before immediately repositioning himself using telekinesis.
Without wasting even a second, he counterattacked.
Multiple Shadow Balls formed around him simultaneously before shooting toward Tamaki in rapid succession.
The explosions chained one after another around Tamaki's position, forcing him backward through sheer firepower.
This time, the attacks were strong enough to crack through parts of his armored scales and actually hurt him beneath the defense.
At that same moment, the others moved again.
Nejire took advantage of the distraction and rushed toward Mirio at high speed, spiraling energy concentrated around her fist.
She landed a direct hit against his stomach.
The impact bent Mirio forward slightly and forced a grunt out of him, but even from such an awkward position, he still countered immediately with a kick that struck Nejire directly on the shoulder.
Both of them winced in pain.
Still, neither had the luxury of stopping to recover.
Before they could even properly reposition themselves, Tamaki and Mewtwo were already above them once again.
The battle continued like that for nearly two full hours.
Explosions of energy, shockwaves, telekinetic bursts, spiraling attacks, phasing strikes, and monstrous transformations continuously collided inside the stadium without pause.
By the end of it, all four of them were visibly exhausted.
The training ground itself had become a complete mess.
Massive cracks spread across the arena floor, entire chunks of reinforced walls had collapsed, and even parts of the building's internal structure had been damaged from the sheer force of their training session.