Musutafu, Japan, U.A. High School, Wild, Wild Pussycats Training Camp.
Hours after the first day of training began, one section of the forest sounded like an artillery test range.
BOOM! A column of orange fire tore into the sky.
BOOM! The shockwave rattled leaves from nearby branches.
At the center of the clearing, an iron drum was filled with mountain water that had reached its boiling point twenty minutes ago, kept at boiling point by a portable heating element wired directly into the camp's generator.
Splash.
Katsuki Bakugo thrust both forearms into the scummy, roiling water without a single hesitation. His teeth were bared so tightly that the skin around his jaw looked stretched to its absolute limit.
The skin of his palm reddened instantly. "Five seconds!" Vlad King bellowed, his voice hoarse from hours of shouting over the noise. "Pull, Bakugo! Don't let the tissue liquefy!"
"Shut up!" Bakugo roared, looking one step away from committing homicide. Sweat rolled down his face as the heat scalded the epidermis, forcing the sweat glands in his palms to expand.
Bakugo ripped his hands free and thrust them toward the sky. "DIE!" A concentrated explosion detonated overhead with enough force to shake the surrounding forest. Before the smoke could even clear, his arms were already plunging back into the boiling iron drum. Nearby, several physically oriented students from Class 1-B were in the middle of strength training under Tiger's supervision. They had all, at one point or another, paused to stare.
And every single time, they regretted it. "Has he been doing that the entire time?" one student whispered. "Since breakfast," another muttered. A third swallowed hard. "Is he... okay?" The answer was obvious. BOOM! Bakugo plunged his hands into the water again."He looks like he wants to murder someone. Is it because of what happened this morning?"
"What else? I'd probably be pissed too if I got handled that easily be a rival." The word rival hadn't even fully left Awase's mouth before the steam around the drum parted. Bakugo, who was currently on hyper sensitive mode, had his head snap towards the source of the whisper with a stiff, unnatural rigidity. His neck twisted with such abrupt speed and precision that it resembled an owl spotting prey.
The murderous glare that followed nearly stopped one student's heart. "Who," Bakugo rasped, his voice incredibly low. His pupils were tiny, bloodshot pinpricks inside rings of raw white. "did you say handled who?" The Class 1-B students nearly tripped over themselves trying to resume their exercises. "Nothing! Absolutely nothing! It's such a great weather we're having for training today." Bakugo snorted and turned away. Then he plunged his hands back into the boiling water. Again. And again. And again.
Meanwhile, a few hundred meters away, Shota Aizawa and Yuta Akutami stood at the edge of another clearing. 'I have to give Hatsume credit where it's due ..' Yuta rested his hands on his knees and exhaled slowly at the weighted vest clung to his body. Just then, the load shifted again without warning, forcing him to subtly adjust his balance. A moment later, the weight in his right leg increased. Then his left arm. Then his torso. It was honestly genuinely exhausting.
In the distance, another explosion thundered through the forest. Yuta glanced toward the source. "…He's still going?" Aizawa took a drink from his water bottle. "Yes." Just like everyone else. The difference being that the intensity of Bakugo's blasts and timeframe between them was a bit worrying though. Yuta was well aware that Bakugo's attacks were based on his stamina.
It truly was a feat to go on this long without any cheats. "…Should we be concerned?" Aizawa stared in Bakugo's direction for a moment. "Not particularly." Another explosion rocked the trees. "His pride took a significant hit. This is how he processes it." "No kidding." My eyes lingered in the distance. Aizawa who looked roughed up in more ways than one, had his eyes narrow as he examined me. "Speaking of processes, what happened to your eye?"
Yuta's hand paused on the vest strap. "My eye, Sensei?"
"Before your internship after the sports festival, you told me that those red eyes of yours could catalog and replicate the mechanical execution of physical movements," Aizawa said, his voice fla. "Yet during the two hours we've spent parsing your form today, you haven't used it once. Not even when the vest threw your balance off during the lateral drills." Yuta looked down at the grass. "I haven't used it because I can't."
Aizawa waited. Yuta straightened, adjusting as the weights redistributed across his shoulders. "I can't use them right now." Aizawa's visible eye narrowed slightly. "Why not?" Yuta shook his head.."I don't know." He looked toward the trees. "It sorta disappeared after the Yamanote Line incident. I haven't been able to activate it since."
Aizawa said nothing immediately. Recovery Girl had already examined Yuta after his resurrection. If there were a conventional injury involved, his absurd regenerative capacity should have corrected it by now. Which left less straightforward possibilities. Psychological suppression. Trauma response. Some quirk-related phenomenon outside his expertise. Aizawa kept those thoughts to himself.
Since he lacked a definitive answer, there was little point speculating. "You'll need to overcome it eventually," he said at last. "A professional hero can't afford to function below full capacity." Yuta adjusted one of the bracers as its internal density shifted again. "It probably doesn't matter that much. With all due respect, Sensei... My current strength already dwarfs a vast majority of what's out there.." He shrugged. "I'm still stronger than most people I'll ever fight."
Aizawa opened his mouth to give his standard lecture on arrogance, then stopped and considered that. Annoyingly, the statement was accurate. "I suppose that's true." He capped his bottle and slipped it into his pocket. "Nevertheless. When this training camp ends, you'll all likely begin field work sooner than expected."
Yuta's brows raised. "Real work? Is the Commission back up so soon? I thought the central headquarters in Tokyo was still a crime scene."
"It still is. The physical infrastructure is a total loss. The Commission President regained consciousness and held a press conference earlier today from the Minato sub-office a few hours ago." Yuta straightened. "So the HPSC is already preparing the provisional licensing exam?"
"No." Aizawa's voice remained flat.
"Huh?"
"The Commission's infrastructure was too badly damaged. They don't have the personnel necessary to organize the exam on short notice. Even under ideal circumstances, it would take at least a month."
"Then how do they expect us to do hero work?" Yuta frowned, his mind quickly calculating the deviation from the original timeline. "If there are no licenses, any field activity we participate in would be an open violation of the Quirk Restriction Laws."
Aizawa looked at him through his hair. "How did you participate in hero work last time?"
"Last time?" Yuta paused, his brow furrowing as he thought back. "The situation with All Might in Tokyo ... that was an emergency protocol. No one could really say much about me jumping into a war zone because the local agencies were already dead."
"I mean before that. Before the Yamanote Line." Yuta fell silent. Then, the answer surfaced. "Internships?"
"That's right. The Commission is considering emergency authorization." Aizawa adjusted the tattered scarf around his neck.
"Students may be temporarily assigned to pro heroes under direct supervision. Limited authority. Controlled environments. But real work."
'I see. Yaoyorozu was right.' Yuta thought. Well, it was expected to happen eventually. "Understood."
"Good. Five is almost up." Aizawa didn't add anything to that. Yuta felt amused. 'I'm pretty that five minute break was more for you than it was for me sensei.' Yuta thought, looking up at the sky through the leaves. Of course he wouldn't say that out loud.
The sun was beginning its long, slow descent, casting a warm, amber hue across the endless sea of green canopy. A crisp, cool mountain breeze swept up from the valley. It was .. so peaceful ...
He closed his eyes, tilting his head back slightly to savor a rare, golden moment of absolute peace.
BOOM!!!
A colossal, violent detonation ripped through the valley, sending a massive, ugly cloud of black smoke and orange sparks billowing directly into the clean mountain air.
"DIEEEE!" a hoarse, furious screech echoed across the hills, completely obliterating the tranquility of the afternoon. Yuta opened his eyes, his left eyebrow twitching in tandem with the distant, rhythmic crackle of secondary explosions. The peaceful atmosphere was entirely gone.
"He keeps that up and I'm gonna put dirt in his shoes."
Hours later, the first day of training ended exactly as one might expect. Poorly. By the time the sun began to sink behind the mountains, the Hero course looked less like future heroes and more like the aftermath of a natural disaster.
Midoriya sat against a tree with both arms trembling as he tried and failed to unscrew the cap of his water bottle. Kirishima lay spread-eagled on the grass, chest rising and falling while Ojiro's tail that had been used to whack him throughout the entire day had gone completely limp. Ashido was face-down in the dirt and had not moved in several minutes.
Even Bakugo, though still upright out of sheer spite, looked like he was one word away from collapsing where he stood. The Wild, Wild Pussycats regarded the scene with obvious satisfaction.
"Excellent work, everyone!" Mandalay announced cheerfully. Several students produced noises that could serve as animal grunts.
Ragdoll clapped her hands together. "And since yesterday was your last day being babied ..."
A chorus of exhausted groans rose immediately.
Pixie-Bob smirked. "From this point forward, you'll be preparing your own meals."
That got a stronger reaction. "What?!" Kaminari croaked. "I can barely move!"
"That," Tiger said with a grin, "is part of the training." Well, with what happened yesterday, it would be a lie to say they didn't see something like this coming. Nevertheless, the strength to argue just wasn't with them. Hence, the students began dragging themselves toward the lodge.
Some moved under their own power. Others were less convincing. Yuta walked near the rear of the group, considerably less battered than the rest. Today had been ... Interesting to say the least. With the constant weight he had on and no use of chakra to make it more stimulating, his body would have certainly been sore under regular conditions. Of course that was nearly impossible at this stage of training though that didn't matter. 'I may have underestimated U.A's possible means to help me back then.'
He shook the useless thoughts out of his mind.
Overall, he felt good. The same thing couldn't be said for everyone else though, and those judgemental looks from every corner just seemed to be singling him out.
The only thing that continued to bother him was something else entirely. His eyes. Nearly two weeks had passed since his resurrection. By all counts, his body was fine and better than before ... If you don't count Recovery Girl's disturbing discovery of course. He honestly wasn't sure what to make of it yet.
However his strength, speed, reaction and healing had gone up several notches ever since what he deemed to be a quirk awakening. However, two weeks since the Sharingan had vanished and despite all the absurdity he had experienced since waking up in this world, the continued absence of one of his most important abilities was beginning to concern him.
At first, he had assumed it was temporary. Maybe even an evolution perhaps as a side effect of his near death experience at the ocean. Now days had passed and the absence of the signature Tomoe was really starting to get to him. 'What the hell is going on?' he thought absentmindedly. Not noticing Momo who wanted to stop him to say something but ultimately held back seeing his current state.
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