Ready to Rumble

Aurdel was ready to collapse onto the bed as soon as he’d entered his room, with the two facts preventing him from doing so being that he knew flopping onto the bed would break it and that he had a class to teach regardless of how tired he was. But he was just completely exhausted, and there was absolutely no way of getting around it. Any other person had been in his position they would have collapsed dead a few days ago. Effectively what he’d done was go on a nationwide tour of Japan, visiting almost every hospital in every town and city on foot. Doing so made sure that no one knew that he knew Jaku hospital was where the Nomus were being made, that way when he finally came down onto the man responsible they could take him and all of his creations in. But when he said that he visited every hospital, he really meant it. There were several thousand of them across the country, and doing so in a little less time than the span of a week meant that he was almost constantly on the move wherever he went. If that weren’t bad enough, there was the additional fact that he was using the Overhaul quirk to heal people wherever he went. And because of that he was beginning to learn the upper limits of his quirk, how long and often he can use it. But the worst part of his little escapade that annoyed him more than anything else was the constant harassment by the press. At first the attention coming his way was just because no one expected him to be out and about, especially in the other parts of the country. However it had increased exponentially only a few short hours as the news of him healing patients was spread both by them and the doctors meant to treat them.

Everywhere he went there was someone with a TV camera or a microphone being thrust into his visor and he could get quite literally no privacy, so much so that he didn’t even have the time to stop and eat or drink. The only way that he was able to get them to back away for a time was by physically threatening them with violence, but that had only worked for so long before they began harassing him from a distance. On top of that, he was facing the heaviest amount of corporate outreach attempts ever since the moment he debuted to the world. With his sudden very public appearance and limelight companies were clamoring over each other to try and get the publishing rights to his likeness, spamming his phone number and email address with countless requests. Every single time he vehemently refused their offers, telling them that hell would freeze over before he gave them his likeness. But that didn’t work to dissuade them. And so after the hundredth time of doing so, he’d actually kept count, he simply decided to put the obsessive media to good use and make a public statement. That statement said that if any corporate or commercial enterprise attempted to try using his name, image or brand in a way designed to attract attention or business then he would be participating in the kind of literal corporate raiding that involved sending a volume high explosive and shrapnel shells through their windows with such intensity that it would make the leveling of Dresden look like a picnic. After that, the messages mostly stopped. All in all, his encounter had only served to reinforce his opinions on the media.

An additional side effect was that he had almost entirely missed the school festival and completely missed a visit by the Wild Wild Pussycats. He was somewhat disappointed by the former as he had been looking forward to trying to spend time with his students, but ultimately was only able to come back for a period of time short enough to view their performance and drop off the treats that he’d promised to Eri. As for the latter, it just reminded him that he still needed to apologize to the Pussycats for all the trouble they were likely put through by the government after he’d first appeared. But there was one thing that he’d heard after returning that shocked him greatly, and that was the fact that Eri would be moving into the school and staying at the dorms with the other teachers. At first he seemed skeptical of the decision, but upon reassessing her situation figured that there was no other choice. Keeping her in the hospital for an extended period of time was not healthy for anyone, let alone a young child. But even worse still would be trying to reach out and send her to live with her extended family, with those that were alive either being locked up due to participation in the Shie Hassaikai or wanting nothing to do with her. At least here at the school she would have access to a relatively safe and free environment, with those that could help her in case her quirk ever went out of control again. Ultimately though he wasn’t sure if ‘relatively safe’ was good enough for her. The school had been attacked by the League of Villains before, and if Chisaki ever got out then he would likely set his sights on it too. Aurdel rubbed his eyes as the suit’s stimulants to keep him awake went into effect, he’d just have to accept it for now. He took a deep breath and he slid his helmet on again. Back to work.

“Look, look! What do you think of the changes I had made to my outfit?” Ashido twirled around, showing off the additions she’d given her costume. With winter beginning to roll in she and the rest of the class had to make changes to their costumes fitting with the season. Normally that meant just adding on a few additional layers to keep them warm, but with this winter supposedly going to be much colder and with much more inclimate weather than usual it meant that more drastic changes needed to be made. And so they were, with three exceptions. The first was Hagakure, for obvious reasons. The nature of her quirk meant that having as little clothing on as possible was a great benefit, with having the ability to go anywhere without being seen as the absolute crux of her abilities. But that also meant she would be incredibly vulnerable to any form of injury or inclimate weather, something he’d personally brought up a number of times. At the very least he’d insisted that she wear some layers while outside of training or combat, but his suggestion wasn’t taken too seriously. The second person that hadn’t changed their costume too much was Kirishima, for quite similar reasons. His quirk made the use of body armor or personal protection for battle redundant, meaning that trying to put on some sort of armor would only hinder him. And it’s not like he could just wear normal clothes either and use his quirk, as reaching the upper limits of quirk often damaged whatever he was wearing with near guaranteed destruction to whatever parts of his body were used most. Ultimately this did leave him with more protection from the elements, though not nearly as much as he needed. The third one… Well, Ida was on the opposite end of the spectrum. Ida’s costume was metal-plate on top of a mostly rubber undersuit, and so it completely protected him from the elements. The problem is that when it comes to temperature control, it is incredibly poor. When in hot temperatures it’ll heat up to an incredible degree, but when in the cold it’ll almost drain the heat from the body. According to Ida he didn’t change anything about his costume because it was a matter of principle, wanting to create and preserve an image. Certainly Aurdel could understand that, it’s the same reason why many years ago when he’d received his first suit of MJOLNIR he opted for the standard mass produced helmet. It just carried a certain weight of professionalism with it.

“Oh, doth mine eyes deceive me? Is this really what I see? Class A slacking off right before training, you must not be taking us seriously!” A boy shouted, following it up with a laugh. Class 1-B had arrived for the exercise. The student that was shouting and laughing was Monoma, someone who had become infamous around the school due to his attempts to try and ‘definitively’ prove his class’ superiority over all the others. But when in came to class rivalries that he was most enthusiastic about, it was the one with Class 1-A that got Monoma riled up the most.

“No, we’re just excited and waiting for you guys to get here,” Kirishima said casually, “So we started talking about our new costumes.”

“Oh, is that so? Well Class 1-A, as of today the scores have been evened out!” Monoma pulled a paper out of nowhere and thrust it into the air, “After both classes performances I took it upon myself to poll the other students on who had done better, and look at the results.” His class began looking at the poll with some weariness

“They beat us by two votes huh? That’s not that much, but I suppose a lead is a lead.”

“That’s right! And today-“

Aurdel put up a finger and interrupted him. “First, sample size. There were definitely more than one hundred people at each of the performances. Two, sampling bias. You definitely went in and purposefully looked for individuals that favored your performance, thus giving you the results you wanted. Third, inconsistent criteria. You have no proof that you interviewed only people who saw both performances, the only people who would meet the proper criteria to participate in your survey.. And four, stop with the antagonizing. Competitive spirit is good but what you’re doing is teetering on the edge of verbal harassment, and it will not be tolerated. Understand?” Monoma didn’t reply, “I was asking if you understood!” Aurdel raised his voice, everyone around him snapped to attention.

“Yes sir!” Monoma stood up straight, surprised by the sudden tone shift.

“Good, then we can get started.” Aurdel folded his arms, “As you all know today is the day of the joint training exercise between Class 1-A and Class 1-B. Of course, we also have an addition that you weren’t told about.” Aurdel gestured towards the other teachers who parted ways, revealing Shinso. “Some of you may remember him from the sports festival, but this is Hitoshi Shinso from the general studie. He will be joining us for this exercise and based on his performance he may be allowed to transfer to the Hero course in the future.” Aurdel gave Shinso a moment to speak.

“Like your teacher said, we met at the sports festival. But don’t think that just because of that we can all be friends. I don’t particularly believe in good sportsmanship because to me you’re all obstacles that I need to overcome. It’s my dream to become a Hero that uses my quirk for good, and if crushing any of you is what I need to do to accomplish that goal then I will do exactly that.” If he was going to be perfectly honest, what Shinso said seemed not too dissimilar to something Bakugo might say. Granted personality-wise the two of them were very different, but there definitely similarities.

“Now with that out of the way, we can move onto the actual grit of the training exercise,” he cleared his throat. “Each match of the exercise will be taking place in only one cordoned off section of Athletic Field Gamma in order to minimize the amount of damage that’s done to the field as a whole, the section assigned to each match is randomly decided and will only be revealed at the beginning of each match. Each class will be randomly split up into five teams of four and assigned a team from the opposing class to fight.” He saw a hand raise from the crowd of students. “Yes, I’m about to get to that. Obviously that means we will have an odd number of people due to Shinso’s inclusion, because of that he will be participating in the exercise twice. Once for Class A, once for Class B. Before any of you complain about the possibility of having to fight against an extra opponent, I suggest you consider the ramifications of actually having an extra on a team.”

“Yeah, like having to carry around dead weight,” Bakugo sneered.

“That’s a blunt and rude way to put it!” Kaminari shot at him.

Shinso didn’t seem to mind the bluntness though. “He’s not wrong. Compared to all of you I’m horribly inexperienced, nor do I really have that much knowledge about how you fight or work together..”

“That’s right,” Aurdel continued, “For the teams that have Shinso, it will be a matter of integrating him into your styles of combat and teamwork. There is also an additional handicap that reduces the advantage of having numbers due to the nature of the exercise.” The same hand as from before raised again. “Ida, I’m getting there. Please save all questions for after I’m done explaining.” The hand went down. “Today, the name of the game is capture. At the home base of each team is a… ‘Cutesy-Wutesy Lock ‘Em Up Prison…’ To win the match you must lock four members of the opposing team in their cages before time runs out. In case time runs out before either team can reach the necessary numbers of captures to win, the team that has locked up the most members of the opposing team will win the match. For those with Shinso, this means that on top of having the disadvantage of an inexperienced teammate you will also be faced with a greater chance of being eliminated due to volume of players. And before you ask Ida, each match will be twenty minutes long. I will be keeping track of the time. Now, pull out a ball to decide your team.” Both Eraserhead and Vlad King held out boxes, with each of the students from their respective classes pulling out a ball marked with a number from one to five.

The first match was Kirishima, Kaminari, Koda and Asui versus Kosei Tsuburaba, Hiryu Rin, Jurota Shishida and Ibara Shiozaki. The second was Yaoyorozu, Tokoyami, Hagakure and Aoyama versus Itsuka Kendo, Shihai Kurorio, Manga Fukidashi and Kinoko Komori. Third was Todoroki, Ida, Ojiro and Shoji versus Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu, Juzo Honenuki, Pony Tsunotori and Sen Kaibara. Fourth would be Bakugo, Jiro, Sato and Sero fighting Yosetsu Awase, Setsuna Tokage, Kojiro Bondo and Togaru Kamakiri. And last would be Midoriya, Uraraka, Ashido and Mineta battling Neito Monoma, Yui Kodai, Nirengeki Shona and Reiki Yanagi.

Shinso pulled out a ball with each hand, he would be a part of Class 1-A for match one and Class B for match five. Near immediately the groups of students separated and began strategizing, Aurdel remained silent as they did so. He didn’t know very much about Class 1-B, all that he did know was gleaned by looking through their files recently and brief encounters he’d had with students separately. So ultimately it was hard to judge how well they would do against his class. But it would be foolish to think that they were guaranteed to lose. That just simply wasn’t the case. They were determined to crush Class 1-A no matter what it took, even if it meant throwing common sense and rationale out the window. Unfortunately for them, he’d taught his class a thing or two. “First teams, you’re up,” Eraserhead said, “Head over to the field and wait until Spartan gives the signal before beginning.”

Match One

The five students of Team One sprinted away from the rest of the class and towards their assigned positions, Midnight and All Might just arriving in the area moments before they’d left. “So you can brainwash people with your quirk, right? That’s a pretty cool ability.”

Shinso sighed, “Do you think it could be better used?”

“Nah, I actually think that it’s perfect for a job like this. I mean sure you could probably do some nasty stuff with it, but that’s way too basic.”

“I don’t really think you’re one to judge on being basic Kaminari,” Kirishima gave him a slight shove, “You still need to think of more ways to use your quirk.”

“Hey, I’m working on it!”

“We need to come up with a plan to beat the others,” Asui said, hopping on all fours.

“I’m not sure if we have enough time to do that,” Kaminari lamented.

“Ibara will be the most trouble to deal with. If we can capture her early on, then we’ll have a much easier time trying to restrain the rest.” All of them got into position at the home base, then waited. A few seconds later a shot fired to signal the beginning of the match.

“I think we should let them come to us,” Kirishima said, hardening his arms. “It’s always easier when you have the homeground advantage.”

“I agree. But I’m not sure if that will be enough, they’re going to come at us strong and-” Asui wasn’t able to finish her thought.

“You guys are still planning? You need to be more like us!” Out of nowhere they were attacked. Shishida came barreling through a wall in his beast form, bringing himself to bear against Kirishima in a clash of strength. The others ducked for cover as scales began to be fired at them from above, shredding through boxes and some of the nearby thinner walls. Then vines ripped through the nearby ground. “We decided that we would just come straight to you!”

“You must be underestimating us if you think that you can just attack us head on and win!” Kirishima drove a fist into Shishida’s chest, throwing the student turned beast backwards.

“Keep it up Shishida, wear him down!”

“Don’t-!” Shishida tried to reply, only to find himself brainwashed. In the days before this exercise Shinso had done all he could to prepare, one of the things meant that he’d essentially followed each students of 1-A and 1-B around to familiarize himself with their voices. As such, when he found out who his team would be fighting against he would be able to react and adjust the plates of his artificial chords accordingly.

“Asui, help me bring him into the cage!” Shinso threw out the binding cloth, wrapping it around Shishida and yanking him forward.

“Ribbit!” Asui shot out her tongue, doing the same and beginning to drag him away.

“Not if I can do anything!” Ibara diverted her vines towards the two of them, likely planning to free Shishida and drag the two of them away.

“You’re right, you won’t!” Kirishima jumped into the path of the vines, using his hardened arms to shred through the waves of vines like paper. A green confetti filled the air as layer and layer was destroyed. Doing so provided them their first capture of the match.

“If you take one of ours, then I’ll just have to take one of yours to make things even,” a section of the vines diverted their attention, grabbing Koda by the leg and lifting him into the air.

“Oh no you don’t!” Kirishima ran over and swung in the direction of the vines as Ibara began to drag Koda away, but he was just out of reach. Then Kaminari suddenly threw something to Koda, who quickly embedded it into the vines. The members of Class B then made a hasty retreat, one at a pace they themselves couldn’t match. Shinso looked around as they regrouped, he couldn’t fail this match.

“We should have a moment to think now, ribbit.”

“We shouldn’t have let them take Koda,” Kirishima slammed his palm against his fist. “Now if we go in to try and find them, we’ll be going in blind and get taken apart.”

“Don’t worry about that, I’ve already got us a solution,” Kaminari said, “Koda took one of my pointer and left it in Ibara’s vines, so we’ll know exactly where they are.”

“We still need a plan.”

He needed to get into the Hero course, it was where he belonged. The only reason he hadn’t gotten into it from the beginning was because of the entrance exam. Back then he could do nothing but watch as the others destroyed the robots, because even if he had brainwashed other candidates to do it for him then it wouldn’t have counted. It was his scores on the written portion that had saved him from failing completely, they’d allowed to at least get into the General Studies course. He took a deep breath and refocused, seeing Mr. Aurdel and the other teachers watch them from a distance. “Alright, I have an idea.”

Ibara dragged and dropped Koda into the cage, locking the door behind him. The scores were even now, but even so they still technically had the disadvantage against Class A’s numbers. And their plan of attacking head on as soon as possible hadn’t worked either, with their strongest member being captured and traded for a relatively ineffective one. “What do we do now?” Hiryu said, scanning around and ready to attack with his quirk. For their first plan Hiryu had gone into the air with Tsuburaba, making platforms with the latter’s quirk so they would have the height advantage and stay out of range from any of Kaminari’s attacks.

“We must come up with another plan,” Ibara stretched out her vines, spreading them across the large stretches of concrete and pipes beneath them, “It may be necessary to come up with a plan that deceives them, splits them up. As it stands we are not able to face them all together, even as a group.”

“That’s true, but we need to take Shinso’s ability into consideration. He’s able to mimic any of our voices, that’s how he got Shishida. If we try to coordinate and set up traps we’re inherently at a disadvantage due to the fact he could insert himself into a conversation at any point.”

“It’d be best if we could isolate him with my quirk, that way he’s in something soundproof and won’t be able to reach any of us. Alternatively I could try and make blocks of air around us to keep us from hearing his voice, that way we won’t know when he speaks and accidentally reply to him.”

“The loss of communication would be too great of a disadvantage. Come, for now we must keep moving.” Ibara picked her two teammates up with her vines, quickly traversing over some of the more irregular structures with ease and moving to another area. It was then at that moment that things became clear.

“They know where we are!” Hiryu suddenly shouted, firing a few scales and knocking something out of her vines. Upon closer inspection they knew what it was, it was one of Kaminari’s pointers. Koda must have stuck it to her while he was being captured.

“If they know where we are… Then we could very well be walking into a trap.” Tsuburaba cautioned, Ibara stopped and set down her two other allies. The space that they found themselves in was relatively open, and there were seemingly only two avenues of approach that Class A could use.

Hiryu then motioned for them to be silent, then pointed towards one of the entrances to the area. “They still haven’t found my pointer, those idiots are walking straight into a trap!” Kaminari said, “We’ll have this fight done in no time.”

“Don’t get so cocky, all you did was throw something to Koda for us to use,” Kirishima chided

“Hey, don’t diminish my efforts!” If there were two approaches, and if Kaminari and Kirishima were coming from one side…

“I’ve got it!” Tsuburaba shouted, noticing the binding cloth jutting out from the side of the frame of the gate. Because Shinso wasn’t too experienced with staying out of sight it meant that they had more opportunities to see him before he could act, and this was one of those. A large wall of solid air then appeared and closed off the second entrance, meaning that it would now be a three on three match. Even with their current strength, it seemed like much more viable odds than a four on three..

“Why aren’t you all going straight for them?” Their teacher, Vlad King, shouted from somewhere, “You know where they’re coming from, just attack them!” Was it really their teacher? Or was it Shinso using his voice changer trying to trick them? “That isn’t even Shinso that you blocked off from the side, that’s Kaminari pretending to be him! If you attack now you’ll only have to fight two experienced fighters.”

“You can’t just rat me out like that!” Kaminari shouted, stepping into view with some of Shinso’s binding cloth.

“You’re supposed to be providing neutral commentary to the students, not directly intervening in favor of yours,” Mr. Aurdel coldly said in response, criticizing him for having given away Kaminari’s position. Then… It really was their teacher!

“Whatever. Class B, make me proud!”

“Don’t worry, we’ll-!” Tsuburaba replied to Vlad, then stopped mid sentence. Huh?

“Now, attack!” Asui leapt out and lost her camouflage, kicking Hiryu in the face and knocking him out of Ibara’s close reach.

“I’ll handle Ibara, you help Asui with Hiryu!” Kirishima and Shinso ran out from the first entrance, splitting up to attack them. Ibara reached out with her vines and tried to pull Asui away since she was closer to her than Hiryu, but Kirishima moved too fast, slicing through the vines and began slicing through her vines faster than she’d anticipated. She brought back a large number of them from the surrounding area, bundling them together and making them into large claw-like objects and striking them against Kirishima. He hardened further though, taking the brunt of her attack and only taking a few steps back. He was completely stopping her dead in her tracks. She quickly turned around, whipping some of her vines back to try and hit Tsuburaba and knock out of the brainwashing he was under. Shinso threw out his cloth, using it to grab her vines and drag them back towards Kirishima where a large chunk was separated all at once.

“Red Gauntlet!” Kirishima charged forward, ready to strike as hard as possible.

“Faith’s shield!” She raised what was left of her vines to form a shield in front of her, Kirishima’s attacks falling onto the vines and doing very little physical damage. The strikes became repeated as he tried to barrel through it, though it was clear that he was having little to no effect. It was then that she realized her mistake, she’d completely written off Kaminari as a threat. She hadn’t realized that the air wall would have gone down after Tsuburaba was brainwashed.

“Consider this as a sort of payback for the sports festival.” She felt a hand on the back of her neck, then was shocked repeatedly. They’d lost. Kaminari let her fall to the ground, and from there she and the rest of her team were restrained. Not soon after they were all dragged to the prison and put inside.

A loud voice sounded over a set of speakers, sounding out differently from the ones that they’d been tricked into believing were their teachers during the match. “Match one complete, Class A wins four to one. Return to the foyer for post-match analysis.”