Ranma ½ My Hero Akane (My Hero Academia / Ranma)

Chapter 4

TPK

Writes Things
#26
“Again!” Akane yelled as she slammed into the mat, but unlike the last time she rolled onto her side and got her feet back under her instead of trying to leap back upright from her back. Leaping back up in one go after being knocked down was impressive, but also left her hanging in the air for a precious half second. In this kind of fight, against this opponent, that was far too much time to be unable to react.

Ranma came in high, kicking off the wall, and his sparring partner grinned. Now he was the one out of position. “I’ve got you this time!”

Akane came up strong and met Ranma at the apex of his jump, where he didn’t have any momentum to use to spin or dodge. She committed, punched, and then blocked his retaliatory kick with her off hand.

“Oh yeah?” He challenged while using her own blocking forearm as a springboard to flip himself over her head.

“You used that trick last time!” Akane shouted, and grabbed his leg before he could pull it in. She heaved, starting in her hips and working her way up to her arms like her whole body was a whip being cracked… And just like a whip, the fastest part of the motion was at the tip.

Ranma spun out of control and into the padded training mat covering the floor of the Tendo dojo twice as hard as he’d thrown Akane into it. He popped back up almost as fast. Blue light gathered in his clasped hands-

And froze in place as Akane threw her hands in the air and shouted, “Quirk use! I win!”

He looked down at the glow and groaned, letting it flicker as frustration replaced confidence as his dominant emotion. Then he stepped forward and flicked Akane on the shoulder. “I had you.” He grumbled.

Akane punched the air again in celebration. Her face was red from exertion and Ranma was barely winded, but finally getting one over on the boy felt so good that she didn’t care. Unfortunately, her celebration quickly ended because he was right. If it’d been a Quirk-legal spar, then she’d have left herself wide open to his confidence attack. After having him as a guest in her home for a week, she also knew that he wouldn’t have left himself open like that if he were on top of his game. Something was up.

She stretched, and winced at the ache from pushing her body to its limit. Sometimes she almost wished Ranma was still dodging her without attacking, like he had that first night, back when she thought he was a girl. That was before she knew that he was a boy that only turned into a girl when splashed with cold water. It was also before she told him that her dream was to be a pro Hero.

Sometime in there the way he treated her had changed. Was it because they had the same dream? Whatever the reason, Akane wasn’t sure if the change was a good thing or a bad one. On the one hand, he took her seriously enough to put serious effort into actually winning their spars, instead of just letting her tire herself out. On the other hand, she was starting to get tired of losing so quickly that it took longer to set back up for the next round than it took for Ranma to knock her over.

Akane could definitely believe that he’d spent the past few years on a long term training trip. Ranma was on a totally different level than her, and the only thing that made it bearable was that it wasn’t like he just lorded an unfair Quirk over her. He was just more skilled, and the knowledge that she could one day close that distance and wipe the smug smirk off of his face lit one heck of a fire in her belly! Akane was hungry, and that made her jittery.

That was the only reason why she was on edge, obviously. She wasn’t nervous because she was going to hear back from U.A. about whether she’d placed into the Hero Course later that day. She was just twitchy, and felt like running up the walls for reasons completely unrelated to not knowing her entrance exam results.

As Akane untied the ribbon around her hair and re-tied it, gathering up the stray locks that the spar had pulled loose, Ranma spoke. “I don’t know why you keep your hair so long.”

“It’s because it’s pretty, and I’m a girl. I’m allowed to like to be pretty!” Akane snapped back.

In the echoing silence that followed, she considered that she might actually be worked up about the entrance exam results after all. “Sorry. I’m really nervous. I heard everybody gossiping about how many points they got in the practical exam when I came out, and I’m still not sure how well I scored on it.”

Ranma opened his mouth, but Akane kept talking, almost babbling to change the subject away from her own problems. Fortunately, there was a target at hand. “Speaking of mistakes, you used the same moves twice in a row. You haven’t done that in the whole time we’ve been sparring, so what’s up?”

“My transcripts are pretty bad, and I’m worried about how I did on the written part of U.A.’s entrance exam.” Ranma mumbled. His face was red, and he averted his eyes from Akane’s inquisitive gaze. The written exam had been in the afternoon of the same day the practical was. “I studied, but pops and me always moved around a lot. I think the longest I stayed in one place was half a year. I met my best friend then. He was a piece of work. ...I wonder how he’s doing?”

He laughed under his breath. “Remind me to tell you about Ryouga sometime. We used to fight over who’d get the last curry bread, or was it meat bread? I don’t remember very well, but it was all kinds of fun.”

“But you’re going to be staying here for high school, right? That’ll pull your grades up.” Akane asked.

Ranma smiled. “Yeah. It’ll be nice.”

“Soooo… What’ll be nice?”

“Staying here.”

“With?” Akane asked leadingly.

Somehow, Ranma knew that if he said that he’d appreciate Kasumi’s home cooked meals, then he wouldn’t enjoy the result. So he cast about and said the first thing that popped into his head. “Well, I kind of like sparring with you. I mean... You’re not bad.”

“I suppose that you’re not terrible either.” Akane quipped back.

“I’m not ‘not bad’.” Ranma pulled a disgusted face, and then exaggerated it when he looked outside and saw that it was raining. If he left the dojo he’d be soaked. “I’m great.”

They settled down to wait on the rain to let up. The distance between the dojo and the house proper wasn’t large, but the rain came down in buckets. Neither of them wanted to go from being hot from exercise to doused in cold water. Neither said anything. They both just stood there in the doorway, waiting in the company of their individual thoughts.

Eventually, Akane spoke up. “Sooo… when you said I’m not bad, does that mean you think I’m cute?”

The boy beside her stared fixedly out at the rain, stone-faced and stoic apart from the slow red blush spreading back up his cheeks.

“You do!” Akane leaned forward, and her lips curled up into a smile of satisfaction. “You think I’m cute, and you’re just a dork who doesn’t know how to talk to girls!~”

Ranma crossed his arms. “I can talk to girls just fine, just not violent ones like you. But yeah, so what? You’re not a model or anything, but you’ve got your good points. You’re cute when you’re having fun -cute for a tomboy, anyway.”

She laughed at him as he squirmed verbally and physically. “You should learn to shut up while you’re ahead.”

A short while later the rain was slowing to a light shower. Akane went for the door, but stopped with one hand on the frame. “I guess I could try dating you.” she admitted. It felt bizarre to say, like she was violating an unspoken assumption on how the world worked. Her dreams of the future had never included a boyfriend.

“You sound like I’m as appealing as three-day old fish.” Ranma grumbled. “What do a boyfriend and girlfriend do, anyway?”

“They hang out, talk about stuff, go on dates with activities they enjoy.”

“So… like best friends?”

“Best friends that think each other are cute.”

Ranma preened. “I guess I am pretty cute.”

Akane splashed him.
 
Chapter 4.1

TPK

Writes Things
#27
Genma crouched outside the Tendo family dojo, between two bushes and under the window so that he could hear everything occurring inside. He was soaked to the bone by the frigid rain, but in his current body he didn’t mind. He had fallen into one of the cursed springs in China, just like his son, with two differences. First, his other body was that of a black and white giant panda. Second, he knew the true origin of the springs, though he hadn’t known that those springs were the ones his mentor had told him about until it was too late.

Hearing Akane make for the door, he slunk off toward the bath, where hot water and a return to his birth body waited patiently for him. He’d given Soun the final word on which approach to try first with Ranma and Akane, and of course his old training partner had taken the easy way out. Waiting to see what happened was exactly the kind of low-initiative thing that he’d do, but Genma was a man of action, possessed of a canny instinct and powerful intuition honed by decades of living by his wits!

And he wasn’t really ceding the initiative. So long as nobody got a good enough look at him to testify in court, it was just like he’d never been there. You can’t be blamed for things that nobody could prove you did! That was Genma Saotome’s motto.

...Well, that and only interfering if Ranma couldn’t handle whatever the current problem was, but that was only a father’s privilege. What else were children and heirs for, if not to take care of their parents?

As he slid through the open bathroom window, Genma considered that things were going rather well. His son would soon be a student at the premier Hero school, and got along well enough with Soun’s youngest daughter. He even had a nice house to stay in with home cooked meals, even if he might have to pick up a part time job soon so as not to be too rude. Who knew -maybe he could phone his wife soon?

On second thought, no. Best to wait until after U.A.’s sports festival. That would surely be the opportune moment.

[hr]

Akane threw open the door to her sister’s room with a crash. “I’m in Class 1A!” She shouted. “I got enough points from bots to qualify for the Hero Course, but when they factored in the extra points I got for ‘improvisation and solid teamwork’ I got fifty-five points.”

“Goody for you.” Nabiki said. She lay on her bed, knees kicked up in the air as she read a magazine. Her eyes didn’t so much as lift over its border. “I suppose that means you’re not going to Furinken after all?”

“No way am I going to the second best school.” Akane scoffed, and then scowled when she noticed the other girl’s disinterest. “Sis- come on. I know your options are limited, but can’t you be happy for me? This is my dream.”

“I thought you wanted to be a movie star.”

“I did, but all the big stars are former pro Heroes these days, so I looked into it, and being a pro is better than being a movie star. Everyone…” Akane winced as her older sister lowered her magazine a few inches, and looked at her with a dry, uncaring expression. “...Everyone likes heroes.”

“Thanks for reminding me that I’ll never be anything worthwhile. It really helps me sleep at night, knowing that dumb luck separated me from a life of excitement and wealth at birth.” Nabiki said.

Quirkless.

Twenty percent of the population was effectively Quirkless, being without any special mutations, unique powers, or enhanced abilities. Each generation had a smaller proportion of Quirkless individuals. Akane’s grandparents were almost all Quirkless, while Akane could count the number of Quirkless teenagers she knew on one hand -and she’d gone looking. Though to call them Quirkless was a technical mistruth. They had a Quirk, the most common Quirk in the world -an extra joint in their smallest toe.

Akane and their father had powers that grew stronger based on the strength of the emotions around them. Kasumi could control particulate matter like their mother. Nabiki had an extra toe joint. It wasn’t fair.

It was also Nabiki’s go-to excuse for everything. She wasn’t originally the lesser of either of her sisters apart from their quirks, at least in theory. In practice she didn’t study as hard as Kasumi, who’d graduated from Furinken’s business course last year, or train in the family martial arts style as much as Akane. Any talent she had for honest work had withered on the vine years ago. Not that Nabiki minded. Practice and study sounded too much like work, to her. She was happy coasting through Furinken on natural talent.

But Akane loved her sister. “I’m sorry I brought it up.” She said quietly.

Nabiki closed her eyes and the magazine, and then rolled onto her side facing away from the door. “It’s okay... but if you could get me your classmates’ autographs now that you’re a big-shot…”

“Sure, that shouldn’t be a problem.” Akane said, and flinched when her sister rolled back over to face her, swung her legs over the side of the bed, and held out an autograph book and felt-tipped pen.

“One signature per page, please, and don’t worry about using neat handwriting.”
 

Anonguy

Well-Known Member
#28
Nabiki's quirk is actually playing her little sister like a damn fiddle.
 

Innortal

Well-Known Member
#29
Always good to see, and I can see Akane's first glimpse of a great foe she will hate: The Train Molester! Why else would Tomura have that many hands?
 

TPK

Writes Things
#30
Always good to see, and I can see Akane's first glimpse of a great foe she will hate: The Train Molester! Why else would Tomura have that many hands?
Congratulations. You just won the Internet. That is now my favoritenickname for him, on par with using Microwave Burrito for Shoto.
 

Innortal

Well-Known Member
#31
Congratulations. You just won the Internet. That is now my favoritenickname for him, on par with using Microwave Burrito for Shoto.
Have to admit, his costume design is pretty poor. That many hands on you, you would figure that applies to his powers. Add that to his creepy vibe, he just screams, "I will grope you on the train."
 

TPK

Writes Things
#32
Have to admit, his costume design is pretty poor. That many hands on you, you would figure that applies to his powers. Add that to his creepy vibe, he just screams, "I will grope you on the train."
I like the hands. He’s being directed, used, see?
 

Innortal

Well-Known Member
#33
I like the hands. He’s being directed, used, see?
I can't help but feel he wore it out one time to try it out, and people completely got the wrong idea about who he is, or what his hero/villain name is.
 

Innortal

Well-Known Member
#34
"Do you know who I am?"

"The Hand?" asked one guy. "Do we just talk to you?"

"He can't be that! Marvel would totally sue his ass."

"The Groper?"

"Ewwww!" cried several females nearby, readying to attack.

"The Shadow Molester?"

"Shadow Groper is better, he only has all those hands on his costume, Molester can require other parts."

"... And I'm leaving," he muttered, walking away. He really needed to do something to get people to take him seriously... Maybe ... invade UA and kill All-Might?
 

Anonguy

Well-Known Member
#35
He's always been a hands-on kind of guy yeah? That Shiragaki Tomura...
 

Innortal

Well-Known Member
#36
Tomura hissed as he saw their failure appear on the news. This loss just couldn't get worse for him.

"And if you have any information about the Shadow Groper and the Telemolester, call the Hero Association or your local police now!"

"... THOSE DAMNED HEROES! I'LL KILL THEM ALL!" he screamed.
 

Anonguy

Well-Known Member
#37
Who cracks the first hand pun upon seeing Tomura?
 

TPK

Writes Things
#38
Who cracks the first hand pun upon seeing Tomura?
You’ll find out when the update with it happens. I’m not giving you that information secondhand.
 

Innortal

Well-Known Member
#39
Probably Akane if she had a run-in with our favorite grape-themed sticky-ball throwing student from 1B.
 
Chapter 5

TPK

Writes Things
#40
“I failed the entrance exam.”

Akane would have never dreamed that so few words could sap so much energy out of her. It was as though her guts had turned into unfeeling, unmoving icy balls, all twisted up.

“That’s not possible.” She said. “No, I mean you were doing so much better than I was. How could you not get in?”

“How else? My transcripts suck, and so did my book test score.” Ranma said. His eyes had a shadowed look to them to match his black mood. Akane could see the despair wafting off of him. “I was just four points off.” He muttered. “Four points.”

“But you did more than enough on the practical. You had to. Four points on the written exam shouldn’t have made much of a difference.”

Ranma muttered something under his breath.

“What?”

“I said, I was four points too low overall, not on the written test.” Ranma snapped. “I flunked the written. I felt like I was taking a college admissions test, not a high school one.”

Akane still felt numb as Ranma continued.

“I got an admissions offer from Furinkan, too -its Hero Course.”

“Really?” She asked.

“Yeah. Pops copied my paperwork and sent in some video of me training, and I guess that was good enough for them. It’s not that Furinkan’s a bad school.” He said, more to convince himself than his stricken audience. “It’s just not number one. If I can’t go to the best school, then I’ll just go to the second best one and work twice as hard.”

Akane didn’t think that it worked that way. The quality of the teachers, the internships available to its students, the raw name-brand recognition that U.A. inspired made the lead it had over Furinkan so vast that U.A. graduates were almost universally better off. She didn’t say that, staying silent and watching as grief bloomed on the boy’s face.

“I can’t fight this, Akane. Getting a bad score on an admissions test isn’t like a duel over honor, or a spar to figure out who’s a better martial artist.” Ranma growled. His eyes were wide and wild, but the frustration in him had no outlet. It was locked up tight inside him, bereft of any further expression without a direction in which to express itself. “I can’t punch this. I can’t ignore it until it goes away, either, or give it lip.”

“Are... those really your only three methods of conflict resolution?”

Ranma looked miserable, which ...was answer enough.

“Can I see?” Akane asked, and the boy threw the letter straight through the air. She caught it neatly between two fingers and popped it open again, pulling out the little holographic recorder.

With the press of a button, it lit up and broadcast a picture the size of a big screen television into the air. Red and blue stripes, separated by a white sunburst of lines, burst out from the middle of the screen, and All Might rose into view. He looked the same as in Akane’s own letter -from the way the conservative yellow pinstripe suit clung to his gigantic, boxy, frame to his trademark swept-up hair that looked for all the world like a pair of blond antenna, and that smile- it was him. There was no one on the face of the Earth that could impersonate the Symbol of Peace.

His voice boomed out of the tinny speaker on the projector. “Hello, Ranma Saotome! It is I, All Might, recording this message about admissions at U.A.! Before I say anything else, I want to personally congratulate you on getting the highest score ever on the practical test. That’s an impressive accomplishment, and we all look forward to watching you go!”

Akane smiled, but her smile dropped from her face as All Might continued.

Then he held up a sheaf of papers, and even through the fuzz of the hologram it was clear to see that they were covered in red ink. “...Unfortunately, you coupled that high score with an equally stunning low score on the book test, putting you a total of four points below our lower limit. Being a hero is more than about being physically capable. You need a keen mind and diligent habits too! So with these results, there is simply no way you can be accepted into U.A.’s Hero Course, as you applied to.

Hearing the Voice of Peace himself, the Number One Hero, say such damning words… Akane patted Ranma’s shoulder.

“But do not fear-” All Might kept speaking, and Ranma snapped back around to stare at the device in shock.

“He didn’t keep going last time!”

“You must have squeezed the button and turned it off.” Akane said.

“-For Principal Nedzu was extremely impressed with your performance, and after examining your records and exactly which questions you got wrong on the written test, he has decided to extend to you a special one time offer!”

“You can’t be saying that-”

“That’s right! We’ve got a seat with your name on it in class 1C, in the General Education class! Now I know what you’re thinking.” He raised both hands, palms forward, and laughed a huge booming laugh. “Gen ed isn’t the Hero Course, but U.A. believes in giving everyone a chance to go PLUS ULTRA! and exceed the limits their circumstances have placed on them. If you work hard, then our General Education Course will whip you into academic shape in no time, and a strong showing in the annual Sports Festival will let you be bumped up into either class 1A or 1B!”

Akane was floored. This was the first she’d heard of that kind of offer. As far as she knew, it’d never been offered before! Maybe that was just because nobody had ever done as well on the practical exam, and so poorly on the written one, but she still grinned giddily as she looked over at the pigtailed boy. “I can’t believe it. Ranma, that’s great news! I knew you’d just done something stupid like stop listening too early to hear the whole message.”

Ranma didn’t react to her verbal prodding. He frowned, deep in thought, and then slowly shook his head. “I can’t do that.”

“Of course you can.” Akane scoffed.

“No, I mean that I can’t take that risk. Being a pro Hero is my dream, how I can prove that I’m really as good as I say I am.” Ranma explained with all the enthusiasm of a man facing the gallows. “I’ve got to become a Hero. Risking that on my grades in school, when I’d have to do better than anyone else at them and I’m already so behind…”

“Coward.” Akane muttered.

Ranma stiffened. “What did you say?”

“I said that if you’re too scared to try the hard way, then I’m sure you’ll do well enough.” Akane said, and waved a hand dismissively.

“Excuse me?”

“I said, if you’re not sure that you can knock the socks off everybody at U.A’s annual Sports Festival, and that you’re too dumb to get good grades, then going to Furinkan is definitely the safe way to be a Hero.”

Ranma, who had never taken the safe way in his life, felt his pride under attack and reacted automatically. “That’s great, coming from somebody as lame as you.”

Akane touched her lower lip with her finger in mock contemplation. “Hm. One of us got into their dream school, and the other is settling for second best. I wonder which of us is the loser here.”

“I ain’t a loser!”

“Then is your dream to be second best?”

“No way!” The heat was all through him now, from his core all the way to the tips of his fingers, he was lit from within to Akane’s sight by flavors of anger and pride. It was easy for her to make someone angry. The spikes of anger were among the most obvious of any emotion, and she had a gift for dragging them out that having empathic vision had only helped her tame, not blunted.

“So then you’re going to give up on this quitter talk and follow your dream, right?” She asked.

Ranma immediately replied, “Of course I am!”

Akane smiled, instantly dropping her confrontational attitude and smiling sweetly at her boyfriend. “Great! We can walk to the train together when classes start.”

Several minutes later, after he was alone once more in the dojo, Ranma turned the hologram projector over in his hands and tried to get upset for being so obviously manipulated. Instead of being filled with anger or pique, though, he was just confused. “Stupid tomboy, tricking me like that.” He said to himself, and smiled tentatively down at the gadget. “Still… I guess she’s got a point. Just you wait, Akane. I’ll be out of Class 1C before you know it.”
 

Anonguy

Well-Known Member
#41
The Sports Festival will be a blast for him. >_>
 

Innortal

Well-Known Member
#42
I wonder if it would go over well if the Hero Akane was assigned to sidekick for was Midnight?

"And your trainer, young Saotome, is him!"

"Nyah!" declared the hero whose theme was--

"AHHHHHHHHHH!" Ranma cried, running away from Lucky Cat.
 

Anonguy

Well-Known Member
#43
Akane ending up under Nighteye would be kind of funny too
 

Innortal

Well-Known Member
#44
I almost fear Ranma interacting with Mei in class 1-C. In him, she will see the perfect tester for the gear she creates.
 

Anonguy

Well-Known Member
#45
I expect at least three misconceptions from Mei and her "babies" and how she's "making babies" with Ranma
 

Innortal

Well-Known Member
#46
"MY BABY!"

Akane glared at the girl, running towards where Ranma had crashed ... and tossing him aside and cuddling a backpack?

"WHY!? WHY DID THEY TAKE MY BABY!?"

"... Seriously?" Momo asked Akane. "You thought she was interested in Ranma?"

"But ... but she is always talking about her baby!" Akane muttered.

"Is ... is no one going to help Ranma?" asked Izuzu.
 

Innortal

Well-Known Member
#47
Actually, thinking about it, I could see Ranma being the 'unofficial' test subject for most of the gear that class could create--many of the inventors being female who come up to talk to Ranma about stuff, making Akane think he's just flirting with them all.

Of course, being Ranma, most of the tests go wrong, and he ends up being a frequent visitor to Recovery Girl, who comments he might also have a Quirk for such, since he bounces back from it quicker than he should. And if a student hears her talking about his stamina and 'bouncing quickly back from things that would have taken out lesser men', I'm sure that won't start some rumors.

End result, more than one of the inventors want to see Ranma become a hero, so they can be famous for his gear, both for being engaged in a fight or even training.
 

TPK

Writes Things
#48
I almost fear Ranma interacting with Mei in class 1-C. In him, she will see the perfect tester for the gear she creates.
1C is a gen ed class. I believe Mei is a Support Course student.
 
Chapter 6

TPK

Writes Things
#49
Shortly afterwards and closeby, a hushed conversation took place.

“You already knew that Ranma didn’t get in the Hero Course?!” Genma gasped. “But how?”

Well. Perhaps it wasn’t as hushed as all parties wished it was.

Kasumi tilted her head and considered the question before answering with one of her own. It was chosen not because it would result in the quietest answer, but because after only slightly over a week in the older man’s company she’d come to guess that direct confrontation would yield the results she sought, at least temporarily. “If I let you down, then will you run off and do something irrational the moment you’re free?”

The older man blustered and swore up and down that he’d never do such a thing, but Kasumi still held him off the ground. He tried to slip out of his shirt, but she shifted her grip to hold him by the shoulders instead of the collar. Eventually he gave up. “Fine, fine.” He grumbled. “But I still think my boy needs a kick in the pants to get his competitive spirit up. He shouldn’t be moping.”

The dust, grit, and other small particles lowered him gently to the floor, and with a flick of her wrists Kasumi flung the cord she’d pulled from outside the house back outside, so that it wouldn’t make a mess. Then she pulled out a small brush and cleaned the tufts of feathers near her wrists. She had to start her zone of control there, and they always got so dusty.

Still, it wouldn’t do to ignore a guest, so she said, “It sounded as though Akane had him sorted out right, wouldn’t you say father?”

Soun considered the question, and then nodded firmly, and with a watery gleam in his eyes. “Quite so, Kasumi. My baby girl’s growing up. It feels like just yesterday when she first met that nice young man and was instantly smitten with a crush! What was his name?”

“Tofu Ono.”

“...He was a doctor; I remember him now. Whatever happened to him?”

“He moved away after Principal Kuno tried to recruit him for his school.” Kasumi said with lingering regret. “It was a shame. He was such a funny man.” .

The Tendo patriarch thought about how nice it would have been if one of his daughters had married a doctor, and reluctantly shifted gears back toward his old friend’s situation. “In a way, I think you’re correct about the boy, Genma.”

“Oh? Obviously, but… in what way?”

“Clearly Ranma needs to be in top shape to make sure his brain is working at one hundred percent from the moment he gets in the classroom. That means good food, a good night’s sleep…”

A conspiratorial grin that crossed Genma’s face as he nodded agreement. “And a refreshing spar to start the morning. Too true. That should get his blood pumping, at the very least. The master always said that getting the blood going was key to.. Er… He said a lot of things.”

And then he did something that he didn’t do often. The man considered the subject some more, turning it over in his head and thinking about not the potential outcomes themselves -that was Soun’s talent- but the way the outcomes could be presented.

If Ranma failed out of gen ed., then he wouldn’t have passed the Hero Course anyway and he could be shuffled off to Furinkan. If Ranma stayed at U.A., but didn’t manage to move up into the Hero Course then that would only prove that he was unready to motivate himself, and that’d tamp down some of his disrespectful attitude. If he succeeded in being promoted, then that might be even better than getting into the top classes in the first place.

He could see it, Ranma coming out of nowhere to smash the competition and win the Sports Festival in a grand slam!

“I’ll allow it!” He said, and slapped the table, causing it to tip towards him suddenly. The vase of flowers set in the middle toppled, and though he caught it almost instantly the water it was full of still splashed him, and Genma Saotome’s portly form was instantly replaced by a huge black and white panda bear.

The bear pulled a sign out of the bag at its side, and wrote on it. Could someone put a kettle of water on?

Kasumi went to get the stove going, and smiled quietly as the original topic of the conversation was lost for good.

[hr]
Ranma stared straight ahead, expression as stony and chiseled as a mountain. Before him was a vast wilderness, separated from him by a thin layer of glass. On all other sides was

“It’s not so bad.” Akane said, and patted his arm to reassure him. “The sports festival isn’t that far away, and once you give a good showing there you’ll be in the Hero Course.”

Her boyfriend nodded, but his face took in a distinctly mossy tone, to match his statue-like composure. Akane ignored the mess of emotion swirling about him, doing the best she could to turn off the part of her Quirk that never quite left her. Sometimes knowing so much about how everyone was feeling, with just a glance, wore on her, so she gave Ranma a little shove to get him started, and they went on their own separate ways.

Akane went left, toward class 1A’s room, and Ranma went right. Class 1C was in a completely different building, but he wouldn’t have to go outside. There was a skybridge connecting each of U.A.’s four buildings.

Now that she was alone her thoughts turned to her own situation. She wondered what her class would be like, and if she’d fit in.

Akane had always been the sporty one in middle school, the girl jock who excelled in sports. Nobody had grumbled and tried to say that her Quirk was the reason she was always picked first in P.E. classes, which was nice, but she knew that that was just a Nerima thing. Nobody who really lived in that citadel of martial arts would demean themselves by using their Quirk when they weren’t supposed to. More to the point, doing so implied that the cheater in question was so unskilled that they had to compensate for lack of martial prowess with the ability to shoot snakes out of their ears, or whatever.

She used to think that everywhere else was where the weird people were, but then Kasumi sat her down one day and had a long, quiet talk about how things that were normal in their own section of Japan were considered ‘weird’, ‘unusual’, and ‘self-defeating’ in the rest of it.

Case in point: the fact that there were more martial arts dojos in Nerima than there were coffee shops, as long as you didn’t count Martial Arts Barista dojos as coffee shops instead of dojos. There were more individual styles of martial arts officially recognized as having their headquarters in Nerima than there were coffee shops there!

But Akane was at U.A., the best high school in the nation, for the express purpose of learning how to channel and use all of her talents and abilities to be a Pro Hero. She wasn’t going to a business high school to learn how to manage the dojo, or to Furinken, where even if the principal was insane the staff at least thought of Quirks as ways to enable your own techniques instead of techniques in and of themselves…

So did all that mean that she was going to be the outsider, here?

The girl stopped in front of the door marked 1A and raised her hand to knock, but didn’t. She wished Ranma were with her. He’d at least be coming from the same kind of place. As it was, she was totally alone.

Would the girls inside look at her and think she was weird? What if they thought she looked strong and confident, only to laugh when she violated some taboo she didn’t know about because she grew up in a part of the country where actual ninja delivered takeout, instead of delivery boys on mopeds?

She could talk with one person at a time, read their mood, see the way the not-quite-colors blended and make all the right reactions at all the right times -if she wanted to put in the effort. But a crowd? A whole classroom full of the absolute best and most talented people in all of Japan?

She had to make the effort. She had to just chase her dream -that spotlight!

So Akane opened the door, and was struck by the utter normalcy of what was inside. It was just a classroom with five or six other students already there.

A straight-laced boy with glasses held out his hand in greeting as she came into the classroom. “Hello, I’m Iida Tenya, from Soumei junior high school. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“I’m Akane Tendo, of the Tendo school of Anything Goes Martial Arts.” Akane replied, and then she smiled and waved at the broader classroom, where the other students had already congregated. It was time to put her best foot forward. “Hello, everyone!”

“Yo.” Kyoka said with a small smile of her own, because the earphone jack girl came to the front of the room as well. She’d passed too! “I’m glad that you made it. I was worried, for a while, that teaming up with you reduced the overall points I could have gotten, but apparently the test was about more than who could destroy the most robots.”

“The rescue points? All Might explained that in the message to me too. Being able to work together with someone you haven’t met before is apparently a big plus in Hero work.”

Iida thrust his hands out rigidly, palms facing each other, and swiped them up and down for emphasis. “Indeed. It is my shame that initially I did not comprehend the true meaning of the test. A Hero’s duty is not to defeat villains, but of course to save others! There was a hidden facet to the exam that was not explained to us. I would strenuously protest not being given all the relevant information on what we would be tested on ahead of time, but in hindsight…” He grimaced. “Some of my older brother’s comments might have been hints that I had overlooked, in my own self-certainty.”

Akane’s instinctive response to the rapid-fire barrage of words was to parrot what her father said, that a martial artist’s duty was to protect those weaker than them, but she caught it before she did. Kyoka wouldn’t appreciate being called weak, and saying that would imply that Akane thought she needed protection. It wasn’t true; they’d teamed up to combine their strengths, but…

“It was actually an accident.” She said instead. “We just teamed up to better take down larger groups of robots.”

Kyoka nudged her with an elbow. “We still kicked ass, though.”

“We did, didn’t we?”

The door opened again, and a boy with hair as bright red as Ranma’s girl body had came in. Iida waved. “Excuse me, but I am making a point of meeting each member of our class as they come in.”

“On a different topic, who was that boy with the cool moves?” Kyoka asked a while later.

Akane’s scowl was automatic. Her moves were cool too! “Oh, like my style wasn’t impressive.”

“Don’t get mad. I’m not saying you weren’t good -you tore those robots apart with your bare hands- but that guy…”

Mollified, the martial artist shrugged. “His name’s Ranma Saotome, but good luck looking up anything on him. His dad dragged him halfway around East Asia over the past ten years, and they never sticked in one place long enough to put down roots, from the way he described it.”

“So he’s like a ronin. That’s cool. You knew him from before the exam, right? You didn’t just make friends while you were there, did you?”

“Well. His name is Ranma, and we’re…” She searched for the right word. Engaged? Accurate, but like hell was she thinking that way. Friends? Maybe. Living in the same house? Dangerously close to implying something that’s nowhere close to happening. “Dating.”

“He’ll be joining us later.” Akane said.

“So he lives further away?”

Akane hesitated. It felt a little too much like gossiping behind his back, something that was uncomfortable for her. Teasing someone to the face was different, of course. They could fight back that way. “It’s complicated.”

“Aw shoot -what a missed opportunity. Still, at least I found out that you’re taken before I got invested. That would have been embarrassing.” A blond boy with a zig-zagged pattern of black through his hair said. “The name’s Denki Kaminari, ladies.”

The girls introduced themselves, and then Denki turned to Kyoka. “So do you know any single, pretty girls who might be interested in going on a date?”

She cocked her hips. “Maybe.”

“Great! Who are they?”

Kyoka’s curiosity froze instantly into prickly irritation, and Akake almost snapped back an insult before her new friend nudged her shoulder with one of her earphone jacks and took a step forward. “On second thought, I can’t seem to think of anyone.”

Denki’s face fell, and he snapped his fingers with an audible electric pop. “Dang.”

As he wandered off, Akane reconsidered whether or not she should grab his shoulder, spin him around, and demand an apology.

Then there was a bang like a door slamming from the front of the class, and Akane started in surprise. Kyoka winced, and so did most of the other people in the room, which had filled up in the past several minutes.

“Hey!” An unkempt boy shouted from the front row. He stood with one foot on his chair and the other on his desk, or at least Akane hoped that it was his desk he was standing on. His shaggy, wild blond hair shadowed the top half of his face, and he bared his teeth in a savage challenge to the rest of the class. “I’ve got a score to settle before the homeroom teacher gets here. Which of you fucking scrubs is the reason I got the second highest score on the practical exam?”
 
Top