MHA: Ground Zero

Katsuki was… mildly impressed.

Sure, only two of his new apparent trainees had come back for a second round, but all of them had taken the step forward and challenged him. Even if he hadn't pushed as hard as he had during the three on one earlier it was still pretty decent.

Even that coward with the sticky balls had stepped up. Granted he was the last one, but still.

It's just a shame most of them were shit fighters.

"You all know what you did wrong, either come back after you get better or show up tomorrow and I'll hammer it into your heads until you get better. I'd grab an ice cold shower if I were you."

Thankfully they were all conscious enough to understand him, though only the air head who made things managed to respond in anything but a groan.

"To increase blood flow to the core, and help recover, right?" She phrased it as a question, but her tone was toeing the line between frank and condescending, as it had been since she'd started talking to them all. He didn't give a fuck, but he could see it becoming a problem.

Maybe she'd take his advice? Somehow, he doubted it.

"So you don't fall asleep and drown."

"Ah."

Katsuki made his way over to the only two people who were actually knocked out. Tenya and Toru, he'd managed to get all of his classmates names again before their matches thankfully.

Nicknames lost their meaning after a while.

"Oi, wake up. It's time to hit the showers you two."

He tried to shake them awake but they both resisted.

Tenya just went limp, no matter how hard he was rocked or shouted at. Fucker took Katsuki's advice too far.

And Toru was even worse! She'd grabbed his hand and pressed it against the large bruise that covered her shoulder. Apparently, he was 'warm' and it felt nice.

A little more heat to his palms had them both leaping to their feet, patting out a nonexistent flame.

"Hit the showers you two. And get some rest. You've earned it."

Tenya just kind of robotically nodded and made his way to the entrance while Toru stayed in place, staring at her visible palm in confusion.

"This is what it feels like to not use my quirk?" He'd sent pulse after pulse of light at different levels and areas at her, and forced her to change their trajectories while dodging a random kick or punch.

She'd struggled, and fought dirty to buy herself some time. But eventually, she'd managed to do it once during their first round. By the third she was refracting every ounce of light he was throwing at her until she'd hit quirk exhaustion for the first time in her life and passed out.

He was kind of proud, honestly.

"Yup. You'll recover your quirk in a few hours. But until then, I want you to remember this feeling. What it feels like for your body to exist without being covered by a literal wall of light. If you want to control your quirk, then this will be your second step."

"To control when and where I go invisible." She was nodding along, clenching and unclenching her fist under her eyes even as she wobbled.

"When you can turn it off and on, try to turn one arm invisible. Then an arm and a leg. After that, go for smaller and smaller pieces of yourself, and do it in larger numbers."

"Until?"

"Until you can turn hundreds of small coin size parts of yourself invisible while leaving the rest of you alone."

She was annoyed now.

"There's no wa-"

"Not anytime soon. That's a level it'll take you years to reach, trust me." Katsuki held up a hand and fired off a small explosion, really just a firecracker to show her what he meant.

Hse narrowed her iridescent eyes at his hands, and then straightened up to meet his own red eyes.

God, she really was a fairy, wasn't she.

Huh, she was scowling now.

"I'm not a fairy!"

Great, that stipid habit he'd picked up from Izu came back to bite him again.

"What even is your quirk?!?"

"Nitroglycerin sweat I can detonate at will."

"How the hell did you do all of that, then?!?!"

"Practice."

"Bullshit!"

He hadn't thought about the hows in a while, honestly.

The other teenagers had stopped leaving by now, and were listening in. Well if they were all curious, he'd let them know.

Izu was the one who mapped out what could be possible with someone's quirk.

Katsuki was the one to show her exactly how far they could go.

"When I was four, my quirk came in while I was climbing an old oak tree, ended up falling off and slapping the trunk on my way down. Blew it apart."

Man those were not happy days, he was looking for any reason to run and climb and stop his body from tearing itself apart.

"The docs had to send me to one of those quirk training facilities for kids with dangerous quirks. Turns out my explosions were strong enough to erase an adult man. Good for me in the long run, but it just skinned my entire palm when I used it back then. Had to learn to tone it down enough not to tear myself apart."

…

"I tinkered with it for a good while, but didn't manage to fire anything off except for my palms for a good few years. And then it was just my feet, so I had to work to ignite my sweat from any part of my body."

…

"Took a few years but I got it down. When I hit thirteen, I started tinkering with other parts of my explosion; the heat, the sounds, the light, the shockwaves. I kept working at it for the next two years. What you see now is the result of eleven years of hard work."

…

…

…

"Good. Saves me some time."

What the hell?!?!

Katsuki's head snapped towards the entrance fast enough for his neck to make a weird snapping noise.

There, behind all of his terrified dorm mates, was the hobo hero himself, Aizawa. Resting inside of his yellow sleeping bag, slurping on her another jelly pouch.

How many of those things did the teacher have?!

"You all did decent for your first day of actual combat training. Most of you know what you did wrong, and for those of you who obviously don't, or weren't paying attention, I've made a note to go into more detail with you at a later date of your choosing."

"Umm…"

Momo looked especially confused, considering the guy had appeared directly behind her, but she was quick to start questioning things.

"Excuse me sir, but who are you?"

The man huffed as he finished hus jelly pouch, only to pull out another?!? What the hell?

Aizawa had never taken his eyes off Katsuki, but he spoke to all of his new students.

"I'm Shota Aizawa. I'll be your homeroom teacher this semester. But for right now, I'm the one who decides if you stay in the hero course or not."

XXXXXXXXX

These kids were going to kill him, he decided. The blonde he'd known was going to be a handful, but he'd hoped the punk rock girl would be able to keep him mostly in check. But nope, turns out she was half of an instigator duo turned trio. He should have gone back to sleep when Nezu called him cackling and told him to watch what was happening in training center one.

He looked over the devastation Endeavor's daughter had helped wrought and felt his soul check out his body for a moment.

"What do you mean, Mr. Aizawa?" Hm, it was the recommendation student Momo Yaoyorozu.

"It means exactly what I said. I'll be the one to decide if you can become heroes or not."

"But we passed the stinking test and we already moved in?!?" Hm, the one with the capture balls, Minori Mineta. He didn't start mouthing off about deserving to be here, he'd asked a valid question, even if it was just mostly whining. Maybe he was smarter than Aizawa thought.

"That's just the entrance exam, at the end of the day, the only people who decide if you stay here are the teachers themselves. UA values freedom of choice from its teachers and students like that."

More like the principal was just insane and bored enough to let them get away with anything short of murder.

"Is there another test, sir?" The Tenya kid, Iida. Whatever Bakugo had put him through had managed to sink in enough to loosen the uptight boy up just a bit. His brother was gonna be relieved the kid was starting to lighten up, it was all he'd talked about when they'd met for bar night the other saturday.

"You've already passed it." He never got tired of their faces when they realized.

"UA allows its students to move in a week before the school year begins, you ever wonder why?"

The not so invisible girl looked up at him in confusion, the blonde goose had really done a number on all of his new ducklings. The imagery was almost enough to make him smile under his captured scarf.

Almost.

"It's the first test of being a hero, initiative."

Their confused faces gave him enough energy to live on once he thought about all the hell this class was gonna raise once he looked away for five seconds.

"Being a hero is mostly a reactive profession. For the most part, you have to wait for someone to commit a crime while you're on patrol. That mostly means a lot of running around and showing the people you are there to protect them, which actively discourages crimes from happening."

"That leaves you mostly with nothing to do unless you're investigating a crime scene or chasing leads down to make some arrests."

"Being a hero instills more patience than just about anything else, honestly." He should know, after all there was a reason he was the unofficial number one underground hero.

"But let's say something does happen and you're just not ready to do anything, let alone save someone else." He wouldn't let these kids go out and die on their first patrol just because they became complacent.

Never again.

They would either live their lives as civilians until they died of old age, or be some of the best heroes this world will ever see.

Aizawa would accept nothing less.

"All of you right now, you could become decent combat heroes. People called in to clear areas of thugs and lowlife criminals. But you don't have the necessary skills to resolve large scale conflicts."

"If your current skills were all you had to build a career on, most of you wouldn't amount to much as heroes, and would be better off finding a different job." He could already see the protests coming, so it was time to end this and be on his way.

"That is why a hero must never stop improving. A hero must work harder than anyone else, even when they're not on the clock. The moment you stop training, the moment you think your current abilities are enough for you is the moment your potential for heroics ends."

Ah, sweet silence. How he was going to miss it during its vacation to Hawaii while dealing with these kids.

"That's why we allow you all to come early, to see who is willing to put in the time and effort when no one is looking to better themselves."

The Tenya kid looked like someone had knocked the wind from his lungs. The only ones who didn't look much affected were what he now called the instigator trio Midoriya, Todoroki, and Kyoka, along with Bakugo, and Toru. Hm, he was gonna have fun with those five this semester, he could tell.

You could practically drown in the sheer sarcasm dripping from his eyes by now.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

"Welcome to UA kids. From this point on, I want to see your best, your PLUS ULTRA."

The ragged man turned around in his sleeping bag to leave, but not before her body managed to eek out a question past her shock.

"What if we didn't come?"

He stopped and turned to stare her in the eyes. It was almost like when Bakugo froze the entire class last night while conversing with Toru but different, as if it was just focused on her.

"What if we had all spent the week getting to know each other, and keeping up with out normal exercises?"

…

"You can't have been willing to expel all of us, right?" Surely not. They can't have been allowed that much personal freedom as teachers of the most prestigious hero school in the world, right?

Aizawa continued to stare into her eyes for the next ten seconds in silence, before turning around and walking up the steps to leave the training room.

Momo breathed a sigh of relief, for a second there she'd almost thought she'd been wrong.

Of course it was just a logical deception, meant to instill a lesson into them before the school year began about working hard.

She felt her heart begin to slow once again, and stood back up from where shemd fallen when Aizawa had appeared behind her only to freeze when his voice came from the top of the stairs.

"Yaoyorozu."

"Yes, sir?" What could he need from her?

"There is no class 2-A."

That's all the man said before disappearing.

Momo felt herself fall to her knees, once more left on the floor by surprise.

She'd been… wrong?

Then what else had she gotten wrong?

'You've had a better education than most, that leaves you with a more privileged point of view than the average person. Makes you an idealist, which isn't a bad thing. You're sheltered, not naive.'

Unbidden, the words Bakugo Katsuki had said to her after walking away from her exhausted form resounded through her head, as it had since she'd lost.

'It just means you also expect the most ideal things to happen around you. Life doesn't care about your preparation. It doesn't care if you're ready for what it's got in store for you. It just wants to throw everything it can at you.'

She had lived a life of luxury, and her parents had spared no expense when she decided to become a hero and heiress to the family business.

She'd worked hard with all of the people her parents had hired to teach her every possible nugget of information that could help her realize her dreams.

Momo was so sure she was prepared for just about anything that could happen. But had never expected to be proven wrong.

And that was the problem.

Why did being proven wrong hurt more than any hit she'd taken from the fierce blred eyed blonde?

Was she that assured in her intelligence that she'd never expected to he wrong?

Was she that proud?

Even now her mind was racing, trying to point out any way she could be proven right in this situation.

'What you have to do is stop making assumptions, stop judging life from how you think it should be and start looking at what is right in front of you. You can make anything, as long as you're willing to think your way through something, there isn't much that could stop you.'

So Momo decided to stop making excuses, stop thinking herself in circles, and start making plans on how to improve her quirk.

She had a long road ahead of her. Thankfully, she realized as she turned around and saw her new friend's shaky hut determined eyes, that she wasn't alone.

Maybe it would be enough.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The other had gone, leaving Izu, Kyo, Shoko, Toru, and him alone in the arena. Good, they weren't ready for what was fixing to happen.

"You just gonna stand there, or you gonna come out?"

The question managed to confuse everyone but Kyo who had signaled to him about their three little voyeurs.

"Sorry kohai! Didn't mean to intrude."

Holy shit, TinTin was real?!?!

Some jacked blonde guy with weird blue eyes was suddenly in front of them. Katsuki hadn't seen him move, and the first thing that he'd caught sight of was blonde hair rising up.

Some type of burrowing quirk then. Rising from the destroyed earth without disturbing any of the debri.

An assassin then.

Though the tall fucker was built like a gid damn tank.

And wearing the gaudiest heor costume Katsuki had seen since All Might.

"We saw the training center was full and got curious! No ones been in here since forever, you know?"

A blue haired girl gliding on some type of yellow ring, some type of energy emission quirk. She too was wearing what he assumed to be her own custom hero outfit.

Not bad.

"You're pretty good! You fought your class' three strongest at once, and then the rest of your yearmates one by one. Nineteen fights in half an hour, not bad. And you're barely nicked!"

Katsuki snorted as he gestured towards his bloody side, keeping an eye on the shadows in the stands. There were three people, and the strongest presence was still up there.

"You and I both know that that's just a scratch."

TinTin's grin had never even twitched during his little monologue.

He was used to hearing himself talk.

"So what are you gonna do about it?" There wasn't enough information available.

These were obviously third years, there was no class 2-A and they'd called him their kohai. They were experienced, not to the level of Aizawa or Nezu, but more along the lines of what you'd actually expect from someone called a hero.

"You're Mirio Togata. The winner of last year's sports festival." Izu comes in clutch with her encyclopedia of all things hero. Which means Mirio was most likely the biggest target right now.

"And I'm Nejire Hado! Call me Nejirechan!" Blue hair said as she waved enthusiastically, she seemed pretty spacy but there was no hiding the sharp eyes boring into his own nearly feral red.

Katsuki felt an actual smile start to manifest past his default scowl.

He knew why these two, sorry three can't forget that shifting presence hiding away(Katsuki could literally feel the nerves rolling off of that one all the way down her, but there was no denying the threat it radiated), were here now.

Everyone in class 1-A needed a slice of the humble pie, and who better to serve Katsuki his own piece than the strongest students in the school.

Oh this would be fun.

XXXX

Mirio Togota was a simple man if he said so himself.

He wanted very reasonable things; to be happy with his boyfriend Tamaki, to be strong with his best friend Nejire, and to save a million people's lives as the hero Lemillion!

Very reasonable things.

But right now, he didn't want to be here.

Yes, it was important that heroes knew their limits, and when to retreat or blow right past said limits. But wasn't this a bit overkill?

Honestly, what was Aizawa thinking, sending UA's Big Three off to face a single freshman who hadn't even taken his first combat class yet.

And then he'd seen the blonde make mincemeat of every other person in his class.

Well, crap.

Now there really wasn't any way for him to wiggle his way out of this. Damnit, why couldn't a teacher be the one to do it.

'It needs to be someone who embodies the peak of what it means to become a hero here at UA. And no one has ever done that but you three.'

The flattery had been nice to hear from the usually stoic teacher, but he hadn't agreed until he'd known the truth.

'It needs to be someone who can relate to him. Someone capable of getting through his stubbornness. Someone who has reached the end of the road UA can pave for its students. It fits that the people at the end of their academic journey here at UA will begin someone else's.'

Mirio hadn't know what to say to that, and the erasure hero had walked away from the three stunned friends.

"I don't like this." Tamaki, his timid boyfriend whose power was only held back by his own quiet nature, was quick to voice his own discomfort.

It had taken years of patience and couples therapy sessions for the quiet boy to take his own comfort seriously and speak when someone stepped beyond his boundaries. It was only recently he'd managed to break out of his stuttering and shaking.

Mirio was so god damn proud of his boyfriend and how far he'd come in the last two years.

"Neither do I." For once, Nejire wasn't bouncing off the walls, excitedly asking questions and making noise.

It unsettled Mirio more than he could admit.

But he was happy she was so focused. When they were freshmen, getting her to even think beyond the next five seconds had been a Herculean task.

One made possible through their teachers here at UA.

"Aizawa doesn't have the authority to order us anymore, you know that Mirio." Tamaki making his arguments heard, just a few years ago, that would have been as likely as the sky turning green.

The bravery his chimera quirked boyfriend had needed to ask Mirio on a date had been monumental.

And it was all thanks to UA's special training and programs that any of the three were the people they were today.

"Let's take a look, and then we'll decide." His fake happy voice had focused both of his comrades on him, his own discomfort at the thought of forcing a freshman to fight all three of them at once was made apparent.

And so was his decision to go along with it.

Because this was something that needed to happen according to the teachers who had made him who he was today.

And Mirio wasn't sure what that said about him or the teachers.

But looking into the red eyes of his precious kohai, he knew that the blonde had figured out why they were truly there.

And was more than prepared for what would happen in the next ten minutes.

The blonde refused to take his eyes off of where Mirio knew Tamaki was hiding away, still unsettled about taking part in this.

Understandable. Stopping something like this was meant to be the basics of being a hero.

But sometimes, you need to learn to bend before you brean.

And he knew looking into the genuine smile of Bakugo Katsuki at the thought of facing off against three people meant to be his senior in every way possible, that the blonde would never bend, would never break.

He would shatter himself before he ever let himself be weak enough to do either.

That wouldn't do, a hero has to be flexible. To know their limits, and when to tell themselves to stop.

To take a step back in consideration.

And know when to ask for help.

It seemed this truly was necessary.

How sad.

He held his grin in ace as the younger blonde moved step by step, leaving his still injured classmates in a group against the wall.

Keeping injured away from the real battles. Good.

"Kachan!" The green haired girl, Midoriya Izumi. She tried to make her way towards the red eyed blonde along with the earjack girl. Only to be stopped by one hand and an honest smile.

They both looked like someone had just knocked the wind out of them both and the world was tilting. Like the idea of seeing Bakugo smile was a foreign concept.

It made the serenity of the younger blonde kinda scary, to be honest.

Katsuki moved in sync with Mirio and Nejire, until he was surrounded in a triangle formation, keeping them both in the edge of his sights while keeping Tamaki's still hidden form in front of them all.

Situational awareness wasn't perfect, but it was better than most Mirio had seen.

His body began to glow lightly with yellow sparks, similar to Midoriya's enhancement cloak. His eyes began to shift, the pupils slitting and stretching every half second.

So this is what his quirk was really like, not those small bombs that he'd shown the rest of Mirio's kohai.

He was the embodiment of an eruption moments away from becoming reality, the potential to tear the world apart, his strength enough to erase the earth beneath him with one wrong move.

He was nothing short of extraordinary.

Why did Mirio have to be the one to crush that indomitable spirit?

Oh, yeah.

Because it was how Mirio had started out.

And now it was Mirio's turn to pass this lesson on to the next generation.

Sometimes, there simply was no chance for victory.