Under the bright lights of Gym Gamma, the students of Class 1-A gathered in their training gear, caught between excitement and tension. Across from them stood Mirio Togata with his usual wide smile, dressed in his own training gear as well.
At the edge of the sparring field, Mr. Aizawa stood watching with his arms crossed, Todoroki and Bakugo beside him. Since neither of them had earned their provisional license yet, their role was limited to observation only. Todoroki watched with quiet, analytical calm, while Bakugo's eyes burned with sharp focus, tracking every movement and every breath in the field. This was his chance to see the real gap between himself and the top.
"Alright everyone!" Mirio called out, running through a few light warm up stretches. "You can attack whenever you want, however you want. Use everything you've got!"
Kirishima and Mina Ashido exchanged a quick look. Despite the aura Mirio carried, him standing alone against an entire class felt almost like an insult to their abilities.
"Since you're asking for it... don't blame us if we hit you!" Kirishima shouted, charging forward with his hardening Quirk active, the rest of the front line following behind him.
At that moment, something happened that nobody expected. In the blink of an eye, Mirio's sweatpants dropped, leaving him standing completely naked, which made Jiro and Mina scream and clamp their eyes shut in shock. But the real shock came a second later, when Mirio's entire body sank straight into the solid floor as though it were a pool of water, vanishing completely from the battlefield.
Kirishima froze in place, looking around in disbelief. "Where did he go?!"
Away from the chaos, Midoriya's mind was working at full speed. He recalled Mirio's words in class and analyzed the students' positioning. His eyes suddenly went wide as he realized the weak point in their formation.
"Watch out! He's coming out from behind!" Midoriya shouted at the top of his voice, launching forward with Full Cowling toward their back line.
But despite Midoriya's intelligence, Mirio's speed was beyond description. He emerged from the ground directly behind Jiro, landing a precise, lightning fast hit to her stomach, then bounced like a spring to strike Aoyama, then Sero, taking down half the class's ranged fighters in a fraction of a second.
Midoriya finally reached him and threw a crushing kick at Mirio's face. Mirio smiled. Midoriya's kick passed straight through his face as though it were an apparition with no substance at all. And the instant Mirio's body returned to solid form, he drove a powerful punch into Midoriya's stomach, dropping him to the ground gasping for air.
The rest of the students froze where they stood. Half the class had gone down in under ten seconds. In the middle of all this chaos, there was exactly one person who hadn't moved from his spot since the fight began.
Zoro sighed slowly and rested his right hand on Wado Ichimonji's sheath. He didn't draw the blade. He simply closed his His eyes, very slowly.
Mirio returned to sinking into the ground. Underground, where Mirio lost the ability to see, hear, and breathe, he relied entirely on instinct. That instinct led him directly toward the swordsman who hadn't moved at all.
Mirio launched from below, aiming for Zoro's back. But the instant his fist broke the surface, Zoro tilted his torso to the left at the smallest possible angle, letting the punch pass right beside his ear.
Mirio's eyes widened for a moment. He sank again, then emerged from the right side, faster this time. Zoro slid one calm step backward, avoiding the strike. Mirio tried from below again, and Zoro pulled back half a step with pinpoint precision.
Mirio launched at full speed from above, throwing a crushing punch. But this time, in one quick motion, Zoro raised his sheathed sword at exactly the right moment and the exact right spot. Mirio realized that if he canceled his intangibility to hit Zoro directly, his fist would slam into the sheath and shatter. He had no choice but to keep his hand phased, letting the punch pass harmlessly through the sheath.
Mirio finally stopped, pulling back a few steps, breathing a little hard, looking at Zoro with an expression that had lost its smile.
A heavy silence settled over the gym, broken by Mirio's voice, carrying real astonishment.
"Weird... every time I come out, you've already known where I'd be. How do you do that when I have no mass or sound underground?"
Zoro answered in a calm, steady tone.
"And you... you vanish before I can stop your movement."
The smile returned to light up Mirio's face, but it was the smile of a warrior acknowledging his opponent. "So... I can't touch you."
Zoro relaxed his shoulders slightly and gave a half smile. "Neither can I."
Off to the side, Nejire shouted, her eyes shining. "Whoaaa! Mirio couldn't even touch him! Does this swordsman read the future or something?!" while Tamaki trembled in shock.
At the edge of the field, Todoroki narrowed his eyes, thinking quietly. "He didn't release any energy and I didn't sense any disturbance in the air. He read his movements clearly. This is a completely different kind of perception."
Beside him, Bakugo was clenching both fists hard enough to whiten his knuckles, watching Zoro with contained fury. He knew exactly what was behind those movements. It wasn't a Quirk. It was that rare, historical power that had nearly gone extinct in this era. Haki. Bakugo muttered through his teeth with bitterness. "Damn you both. Moss head and Deku. You've both got rare, infuriating powers and abilities, but don't you dare think you're going to leave me behind or that I'll just keep watching from the back! I'm getting that damn license soon, real soon!"
"You've all understood the gap now." Aizawa cut in with his dry voice, breaking the students' stunned silence, his eyes never leaving Zoro. "Togata has experience he built through effort to overcome the flaws in his Quirk. But Roronoa has a 'presence' and an instinct that doesn't belong to this era. His perception goes beyond normal senses, as though he reads his opponent's will before they even move. This is the standard you should all be aiming for if you want to survive out there."
Bakugo shot his teacher a sharp sideways look, his mind analyzing every word Aizawa had just said. Doesn't belong to this era? Reads the opponent's will? Bakugo thought, confused. Was Aizawa just offering a sharp analytical observation based on what he'd just seen? Or did he actually know the truth behind Haki and was deliberately hiding it? Bakugo couldn't tell if his teacher was faking ignorance or genuinely didn't know anything, but what he was certain of was that this mystery only made him more determined to crush both of them.
A few minutes later, the exhausted students gathered around Mirio in the middle of the gym. Midoriya held his notebook, his eyes shining with curiosity.
"How do you do that, Togata senpai?!" Mina asked, holding her stomach in pain. "Your Quirk is unstoppable! It's the strongest Quirk we've ever seen!"
Mirio shook his head with a serious smile, his tone shifting to something closer to a pro hero delivering a hard lesson.
"Everyone thinks that. But my Quirk is far from perfect. When I phase, my lungs can't take in oxygen, my eyes can't absorb light, and my ears can't pick up sound. It's a terrifying experience, like falling into a black void."
The students were shocked by this explanation. Mirio continued.
"To be able to fight with it, I had to learn one thing: anticipation. Reading my opponent's movement, analyzing their breathing, their next step, before I dive into the dark. My Quirk was never strong on its own. It's my experience and constant training that made it look that way."
Mirio glanced quickly at Zoro, who stood leaning against the wall looking bored, then added: "Anticipation is the strongest weapon any hero can have... or any warrior."
Midoriya started writing furiously in his notebook, having fully understood the message.
The atmosphere was calm in the Class 1-A dorm. In the common room, Kaminari complained while holding an ice pack against his stomach, while Kirishima talked excitedly about how to develop his Quirk to keep up with Mirio's speed.
As for Midoriya, his mind was still stuck on what had happened in the gym. How had Zoro dodged Mirio's hits with that kind of precision? Was it Haki? Unable to hold back his curiosity, he climbed the dorm stairs and headed toward Zoro's room.
Midoriya stood in front of the door and knocked twice.
"Zoro kun? Are you awake?"
"Come in." The voice came from inside, rough and broken up, laced with heavy breathing.
Midoriya opened the door and froze on the spot, stunned. His notebook slipped from his hand and hit the wooden floor.
Zoro was doing push ups, but not in any normal way. He stood upside down on one hand, balanced specifically on just two fingers, while a terrifying pile of massive iron weights (which he'd asked Momo Yaoyorozu to make specifically for him) was stacked across his back and legs in a way that defied the laws of physics, at a weight surpassing several tons.
Worse than that, Zoro's body was dripping with sweat as though he'd been submerged in water, veins bulging from his arms and neck as though about to burst, and yet, he kept counting in a flat, steady rhythm.
"Nine thousand nine hundred seven... nine thousand nine hundred eight..."
"Z... Zoro kun!" Midoriya shouted, waving his hands in panic, his eyes nearly bulging out of their sockets. "What's with all these weights?! How is your spine not being crushed?! You don't even have a Quirk that enhances physical strength!"
Zoro stopped moving, lowering the weights slowly and precisely until they settled on the floor with a sound that shook the whole room, then dropped to his feet and wiped the sweat off his forehead with a towel, looking at Midoriya with confusion.
"Why are you screaming? This is just a light warm up to loosen the muscles before bed."
"A light warm up?!" Midoriya said it in shock. Then he looked at Zoro's arms, covered in scars and thick muscle.
"He's an actual monster!!"
Midoriya picked up his notebook nervously, cleared his throat, and said: "By the way... what did you decide about the Work Study program? Now that we have our provisional licenses, we'll be starting to accompany pros soon."
Zoro tossed the towel aside and asked calmly: "What did you decide?"
"I reached out to Gran Torino, and I'm waiting on his answer right now." Midoriya answered eagerly.
Zoro turned his back to grab one of his swords and said in a low voice: "Me? I'll be talking to that old man soon. Shimotsuki."
Far from the academy and the warm dorm, darkness and damp clung to the League of Villains' crumbling hideout.
Shigaraki Tomura sat on one of the worn wooden chairs, scratching at his neck with intense agitation. Things hadn't been going well since All For One's fall. Funding was nearly nonexistent, and the new recruits lacked any real competence.
"When's Twice getting back?" Spinner complained, fidgeting with his massive weapon.
Kurogiri answered calmly, wiping a glass behind the rusted bar. "Twice has a wide network of contacts. We need to trust his judgment."
Suddenly, the hideout's heavy iron door swung open with an unpleasant screech. Twice walked in with his usual quick steps, waving his hands excitedly: "I'm back, everyone! I brought you a very special guest! Or maybe a really terrible guest!"
Everyone in the room froze. Behind Twice, no ordinary recruit walked in.
Overhaul stepped in with quiet steps that radiated a deathly presence strong enough to make Himiko Toga stop smiling.
He stopped in the middle of the room. He cast a cold glance over the filthy walls, then his eyes settled on Shigaraki, who had stopped scratching his neck and narrowed his eyes with visible danger.
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