"Hey! I'm talking to you! Can you all quiet down?"
A weak, gravelly voice drifted through the classroom door.
The chattering students fell silent and craned their necks. What shuffled into view looked like a giant, bedraggled caterpillar of a sleeping bag. Everyone gaped.
The figure unzipped himself with theatrical slowness. Messy, shoulder-length black hair fell into his eyes. He had a perpetual five-o'clock shadow, dead fish eyes, and a plastic food pouch still dangling from his mouth.
"I'm your homeroom teacher, Aizawa Shōta. Take care of me."
"Wha—?!"
A chorus of shocked exclamations erupted. This scruffy, exhausted man was their homeroom teacher? Where was the imposing, mature educator they'd pictured for U.A.?
Aizawa ignored the stunned faces. He yanked a tracksuit from the sleeping bag with a long sigh. "Don't waste my time. Put these on and get to the field."
They did as told. The school's athletic ground felt tiny compared to the campus—U.A. spoilt for size even in its playground.
"Quirk-mastery test?" the whole of Class 1-A murmured. They hadn't expected this on the first official day—the entrance ceremony and campus tour were the normal schedule.
Aizawa glanced once at Jiro Kyoka, then at Lock. "I planned to have the top scorer from the practical test do this, but since we have a Pro Hero among students… Wizard Lock, you're up."
A hush. Not that anyone doubted Lock—everyone's real surprise was at Kyoka. The practical scores hadn't been posted, yet Aizawa's tone implied she'd done best of all.
"How far did you throw a softball back in middle school?" Aizawa asked Lock.
Lock's mouth twitched. In his previous life, that question would have been simple; in this life… well. "I don't remember exactly. Definitely not over a hundred meters."
Aizawa nodded, and that answered everything and produced a softball. "Then throw it again—use your Quirk if you like."
"Any Quirk use is allowed?"
"Any way you want."
Lock toyed with the softball, thinking. The task smelled like theatre more than measurement—but Aizawa was careful with the Quirkless or undertrained; his real concern was Izuku Midoriya. The boy's mastery of One For All was still unstable, and Aizawa would not let a dangerous gap remain untested in front of a class.
Lock felt the familiar hum of magic along his skin. He let it thrum, a cold clarity settling in his palms.
"All right." He straightened. "Full power."
Around him, the 1-A students watched with varying degrees of awe and horror.
Lock gathered wind magic, then layered it with the cold, crystalline shimmer of the ice arts he'd been practicing. A pale, glinting muzzle blossomed in front of him—an enormous cannon of ice and snow, impossible and ridiculous, sitting on the starting circle.
"This isn't a softball toss," someone yelled.
Technique, form, the coach's textbook—none of that applied here. Lock grinned and set the cannon's breech at the marked angle, watching the horizon for stray pedestrians and ornamental shrubs.
He slipped the softball into the muzzle and threaded a gust of summoned wind around it. Then, with a flick of dragon-slayer-infused force, he fed blasting magic into the chamber.
"Three… two… one—launch!"
The softball fired like a comet.
It punched through the blue and climbed, a tiny white speck racing toward the sky. The students watched its arc, mouths open.
Aizawa squinted at the trajectory. "Over five kilometers."
Five kilometers. The sensor board blipped and finally failed to lock a maximum; the ball simply kept going beyond the measurable range. Lock clapped once, satisfied.
Around him, faces registered everything from admiration to straight disbelief.
"Not bad," Lock said, shrugging. He'd turned a childish school test into a display—because if Quirks could be used, why play small?
Class 1-A fulminated in their heads: you didn't even use a throw! You made a cannon! What is this even—?
But the verdict in the air wasn't unanimous outrage. Aizawa's brow twitched with a half smile that, for him, was as much praise as he'd ever give.
"It's a good throw," he said dryly.
Everyone: ...
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A/N: 40+ Advance Chapter Has Been Uploaded.
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