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

[TPK]

In vague collaboration with @The Ero-Sennin , I present My Hero Akane, a tale of friendship at the end of a knife, romance born of dubious logic, and gratuitous violence.

-----

"So it's a quirk marriage?" Akane Tendo said. At her father's astonished look, she leveled a finger at him. "Don't you dare! You know exactly what people will think when they find out I'm engaged to some boy with an emotion-making quirk. I'll never be a pro hero if everybody's thinking in the back of their heads that I'm just going to retire early and raise kids until one has the perfect combination of quirks!"

“It’s not like that at all.” Her supposed fiance-to-be’s father said indignantly. “A quirk marriage requires the families to know what your quirks are before arranging it. Your father and I decided to marry our heirs before you were even born.”

“As if that makes it any better.” Akane said, and looked to her own father for support. When he glanced away uncomfortably instead of rising to her support, her face reddened in frustrated anger, and she clenched her hands into fight fists at her sides. She turned on her heel and stormed from the room. “I’m going to the dojo.”

Soun Tendo fought back tears as he watched her leave.

Nabiki, the middle sister, took the opportunity to slip out of the room. She was used to easily avoiding attention, and reflexively froze when Genma immediately noticed her trying not to be seen. He glanced away dismissively, and she scurried upstairs.

Kasumi Tendo, the eldest of the three sisters, then brought the pair of men a matching pair of beers that the duo sipped quietly, putting aside all concerns to bask in the simple satisfaction of reuniting with an old friend.

The two were the same age, but looking at them gave two vastly different impressions. Soun Tendo stood tall and squared, with broad shoulders and long black hair. His appearance was patrician, almost as noble-looking as he’d been in his youth, but for the lines on his face that spoke of intense joy and sadness in equal measure.

Genma Saotome was shorter than his friend, and rounded in the middle. His shoulders angled downward, playing into the impression of bulk, he wore a bandana over his bald scalp, and his eyes sat furtively on a face that spoke of chronic worry. The weight was new, but the easy confidence that hung about him was not. He had always been the quicker to decide on a course of action and commit to it, between them.

“Perhaps one of your other daughters?” Genma broke the silence to ask. “If Akane is unwilling, perhaps -what were their names- Nabiki and Kasumi?”

Soun mulled that over, inspecting it in his head. “No.” He said, and then lowered his voice to a whisper. “Nabiki is quirkless.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that.” Genma said easily. “My mother was quirkless.”

“Of course. I would never insult your mother. She was a wonderful woman, but almost everyone in the younger generation has a quirk. If Nabiki partners with Ranma, then wouldn’t that socially disadvantage him?”

“That’s just nonsense. Skill is what matters to a martial artist, the product of a good work ethic and excellent training, not whatever quirk you were born with.” The protests weren’t entirely hollow. “But you know your own family best. What about your eldest?”

Kasumi chose that moment to come back into the living room with another pair of bottles. She whisked the old ones away at the same time, and smiled politely but stiffly at her prospective father in law. “I’m sorry but younger men bore me, and I started seeing someone recently.”

Soun jerked upright, shocked. “You didn’t tell me you were seeing someone!”

“We’ve only gone on two dates.” She soothed.

“Well, that hardly counts. Have another drink -the night is young.” Genma tried to calm his old friend as well, and slid a fresh bottle into his hands.

“Mm. No.” Kasumi shook her head primly. “We’ve known each other for almost a year, from work, and we’re quite sure of what we’re doing.”

The implications in that statement made her father’s face first turn green, then red, then sickly blue. He raised his bottle to his lips and swallowed half of it before collapsing onto the table, sobbing. “WAAAAH! My daughter is all grown up!”

Kasumi handed the family’s guest a hand towel embroidered with a picture of a waterfall, glanced meaningfully at the growing puddle of tears seeping across the wooden table, and left.

After much consoling, cajoling, and the conspicuous absence of further alcohol until the crying had stopped, the two grown men once more sat across from each other. If Soun’s eyes were red and puffy, then neither of them acknowledged noticing it. Kasumi brought them the last of the beers, and left, leaving the two of them alone.

“Akane does have a point. Engaging her and Ranma… It does seem like a quirk marriage.” Soun said as he stroked his moustache.

Genma snorted. “But it’s not. Come now, old friend. You know better than that!”

Akane’s father nodded, but he still hesitated. Both fathers had studied under the same master, suffered under him for the sake of learning from his wisdom and skill, but… there was a reason why Soun Tendo was the only member of their group who didn’t have arrest warrants issued in his name in three countries. He knew how to take care of his image.

“Your boy is going to U.A., isn’t he?” He asked.

“Of course he is. Ranma’s got problems, but I’ve trained him well enough for that!” Genma said.

“My girl wants to attend as well, in their heroics program. The problem is that U.A. is the best school for heroes in the country, so the media likes to dig into any hint of scandal it can find. It doesn’t matter that we didn’t intend to create a quirk marriage, so long as it looks like one occured.”

“You think the media will jump on it?”

“I’m sure that they would, if we push this. We’d put the good names of our respective martial arts styles at risk.”

Genma considered that. He wasn’t a stupid man. He was actually more clever than Soun. He thought differently -more deviously. It was one reason why he disapproved of the system that created and governed Pro Heroes. Such a rigid structure was rife with opportunities for the unscrupulous to abuse it. A true hero had to be governed by his passions and his honor, which is why he kept his activities outside the mainstream, and acted as a vigilante.

...That he had a rap sheet that weighed more than he did was unimportant. Nobody could prove that he’d done anything illegal.

“Perhaps you’re right. If we take the selfish path and rush this union, then the media will blow it up out of proportion, and sabotage their careers.” He admitted, but then narrowed his eyes and leaned forward, smiling. “But if the two of them just so happen to end up in the same school?”

Soun’s face sprouted a smile to mirror Genma’s. “In the same class.”

“Spending time with each other.”

“Training together.”

“Living in the same house after classes.”

“A young man and a young woman, thrown together so often, can only have one outcome!” Soun proclaimed. “And we won’t even have to do anything. You really are a genius, old friend.”

Genma chuckled. “I think this calls for a celebratory toast.”

“Exactly what I was thinking. Only… you are sure that Ranma can pass the entrance exams, aren’t you?”

“His academics are a little shoddy.” The rotund man admitted. “But his physical abilities are very high, especially when he’s confident enough to use his quirk. I just can’t see him anywhere other than rising to the top -just don’t tell him that. I don’t want him to get a swelled head.”

Neither of them men paid attention to Ranma Saotome, or noticed that he’d followed Akane out long before.

-----

Akane stood in the dojo. She hadn’t taken the time to change into a gi, and wore the same jean shorts and t shirt she’d been introduced to Ranma in. Sweat gleamed on her arms and dampened her brow, and she panted lightly as she stilled the gently swaying punching bag. Faint yellow light wisped from her hands -her quirk responding to the happiness her father and that fat man felt as they decided her future for her.

The Tendo Dojo was a licensed quirk-use school for limited scenarios, mostly limited to martial arts matches held within its walls, as well as the training for those matches. Joy didn’t do anything to a punching bag. It just helped her sustain her maximum effort for longer. It was something like an endurance boost, but it faded as soon as she stopped using it, dropping her back down to exhaustion.

She turned away and saw the boy there, watching her. He had black hair with a slight curl to it, cut almost like hers was, but instead of reaching down to her back his was tied up in a short, thin braid. He wore a red shirt over loose, deep blue pants that were tied off at the ankle so that they wouldn’t flap around, and his gaze was judgemental.

Akane didn’t like judgemental.

“And what do you have to say for yourself?” She snapped. “Do you think we should get married, huh?!”

Ranma shoved his hands in the pockets of his baggy pants. He stared past her, and then abruptly looked her directly in the eyes. “If you’ve got a dream to follow, then you should do that. All this arguing is just a waste of time.”

“What?”

“You wanna be a pro hero, right? Me too, and I’m going to be number one.” Ranma said, and flashed a confident grin that completely changed his face. Gone was the brooding silence, the disgruntled look. He was confident now, brimming with energy. “I’ve got an application to U.A. and everything.”

“Even after being out of the country for a while? How’d you get an application in?”

“Pops said he knew somebody who knew somebody.” Ranma shrugged, showing his utter disinterest in how he’d be taking the exams.

“That makes sense, at least.” Akane grumbled.
“Anyway, the important thing is that a martial artist needs to follow their gut, according to my pop, and… I mean he’s usually a liar, and he’s lazy, and a thief…” He trailed off, and scratched his head sheepishly. “But he’s right about that. If you can’t believe in yourself, then what can you believe in?”

“That’s nice of you to say.” Akane mumbled. “I’m sorry I snapped at you. To tell the truth, I’m taking the U.A. entry exam tomorrow too, and I guess I’m just a little nervous, and this engagement thing didn’t help...”

Ranma nodded. “Even if you are a girl, I’m sure you’ll do alright. You didn’t look half b-”

He never saw the punch that laid him out, but he felt it when he woke up in the morning.

 

[TPK]

Years ago there was a bus stop just a block from the Tendo home, and then suddenly there wasn’t. The reasons given were “we can’t afford to offer service in your community” and “the insurance premiums are too high”. Akane thought it was stupid. As if a real martial artist would involve bystanders in their fights.

So then buses didn’t run in Nerima. Apparently, not even the most influential residents of the district could make bus companies run routes through an area most famous for having a hugely disproportionate number of honor duels, street fights, and completely legal (all permits filed, no quirks allowed) martial arts battles.

“All I’m saying is that it’s either U.A., or a high school where the principle throws exploding coconuts at students and runs around with electric shears. U.A. isn’t a school where that kind of thing is allowed, so even if Furinken is just about as good, I’d rather commute to more normal school.” Akane told Ranma. She was still mad at him after his remarks last night, but she was nervous, and so she talked. U.A.’s entrance exam was in an hour, and if she failed… at least she’d have guaranteed admission to Furinken.

“Why do you want to go to U.A.?” She asked Ranma, suddenly aware that she’d been babbling instead of letting him speak.

The boy hopped up on top of a picket fence and walked along it like a tightrope, hands in his pockets. He had the balance of a cat. “It’s the best, and I’m gonna be the best, so I’ve got to go there.”

“...That’s a really simple way of deciding.” Akane said.

Ranma shrugged. “I’m sure that I’ll end up the best anyway, even if I didn’t get into the best class at the best school, but having good teachers means that you learn faster than people who don’t have good teachers. Isn’t that why people care about getting into U.A. in the first place?”

That was--

It wasn’t wrong, but that was such a blunt way to put it that Akane didn’t want to admit that he had a point. U.A. wasn’t just the best school for Heroes-to-be in Japan. It was a place practically cloaked in heroism and wonder, a temple where students went to be nurtured into the champions of justice and the protectors of the weak that everyone admired!

And then Ranma interrupted her fugue by sticking his foot into his mouth. Again.

“I think it’s great that you’re trying to get in too. A girl like you can really use the leg up U.A. offers, because you’re not gonna succeed as a pro Hero because of your looks.”

U.A. students couldn’t bring shame on their school by beating people unconscious in the street. Akane had to act like she was already at the job she wanted, like the posters said, and that meant clenching her hand into a fist at her side instead of laying that asshole out cold. But that didn’t mean she had to be happy about it.

Face hot with anger and humiliation, Akane stormed forward, breaking out into a run toward the bus station. She refused to look at Ranma when he caught up to her, and stared fixedly out the window on the whole bus ride. Even doing her best to stew in her own frustration on the walk up the hill to the shining academy upon it.

U.A. stood like a gleaming fortress. Double walls surrounded it, the traditional stone one hiding an electrified fence. There was only one gate through the wall, a boxy one whose barred door slid open as it sensed their special purpose single-use entry tickets. The symbol of the school was an A nested inside a blocky U, and the walk up to the main gate was lined with sculptures, busts of heroes who’d graduated from the famous school.

Its main body resembled two office buildings joined in the middle by a bridge, for all the world like a huge letter H. The structure was covered in bright windows, but the entrance hall at the front was low and sedate in comparison. It resembled an Ancient Greek temple more than anything else, made of white marble and with a massive overhang supported by bevelled pillars.

“The practical exam starts at nine.” The upperclassman standing just inside the lobby said as he registered Akane.

That was one of the things that made U.A. stand out. It didn’t just take the normal batch of entrance exams to get into it. You had to go through a special practical exam too. It was supposed to make sure that only those willing to put up with the rigors of Hero life would get in, though the details changed slightly every year.

Akane’d heard that the exams usually involved robots and fighting. For a moment nerves almost overwhelmed her, before she buried them under a renewed wave of irritation. Ranma wasn’t at the registration table! Where was he? She spotted him as he slid through a crowd to stand in line.

“There you are.” She grumbled. “I want to get good seats near the front, before they’re all taken.

----------

“Welcome to my show today! Everybody say “hey”!” Akane didn’t say a word. She wanted to -Present Mic was one of her favorite heroes, but she couldn’t be the first to break ranks and reply.

He was a tall man, and lanky. His costume was black leather pants and shirt, with metal shoulder guards and a wide studded belt. The collar of his hirt swept up to ear level, and framed the gleaming boombox-like contraption around his neck that helped control his vocal quirk. He wore sunglasses, and his blonde hair swept up from the back of his head like a great yellow fin.

“What a refined response. In that case, I’ll quickly present to you the rundown on the practical exam! Are you ready?” He pumped his arm up, putting his whole body into the motion.

“YEAH!” Akane stood up with the Hero, fist pumped to match his. No one else did.

Everyone stared. She quivered in place, mortified.

“Alright! That’s more like it!” Present Mic said, and the spell was broken. “Now, as it says in the application requirements, you listeners will be conducting ten-minute mock urban battles after this! You can bring whatever you want with you, and after the presentation you’ll head to the entrance gate assigned to you, okay?”

This time he pointed directly at Akane, and red-faced she once more leapt to her feet. “Okay!” To her shock she wasn’t the only one. More people had responded in kind, galvanized by her own action.

“There are three types of faux villains in each area. You earn points for each of them based on their level of difficulty. You goal, my dear listeners, is to earn points by immobilizing the faux villains, and of course attacking other examinees and other unheroic actions are prohibited!

The screen behind him showed a pixelated Hero attacking a small wheeled robot, a robot on four legs, and a car-sized crawling robot in quick succession.

A serious-looking student in the middle ranks of seats stood up, hand raised. “May I ask a question!”

“I bet it’s about the fourth kind of villain on the printout, Examinee 7111.” Present Mic said knowingly, and tapped his forehead. “The fourth kind of villain is worth zero points. That guy’s an obstacle, so to speak. There’s one in every battle center -an obstacle that’ll go crazy in an enclosed space like that. It’s not impossible to defeat it, but you don’t have to beat it either. I recommend you listeners just avoid it.”

Beside Akane, Ranma stiffened at the implied challenge Present Mic’s smile carried. “We’ll see about that.” He muttered.

“That’s all from me! But before I go, I’ll give you listeners a present --our school motto! The hero Napoleon Bonaparte once said: ‘a true hero is someone who overcomes life’s misfortunes’. Go beyond. Plus Ultra!” The screen once more lit up, this time with giant golden letters that sparkled -PLUS ULTRA! ...Now everybody, good luck on the exam. Struggle well!”

----------

The hopeful teenagers took buses to their respective entrances, leaving the urban area completely in order to go to a fake city built up in the middle of a rural area, surrounded by a wall ten meters tall. The buildings inside were office blocks and residential apartment structures, big ones that rose above even that wall, visible for miles. Even the door set into the outer wall was big enough to fit the whole Tendo family home.

“U.A. doesn’t do things halfway.” Akane said. She’d taken advantage of the time before the bus left to change into the pale yellow gi that the Tendo school of Anything Goes Martial Arts used as its practice uniform. It was tough, and would hold up to physical activity more than her normal clothes.

Ranma hadn’t bothered to change out of his pants and shirt. He’d been sorted to the same battle center as her, probably because they’d ended up seperated in the lobby for long enough that a crowd had made the man at registration loop all the way back around. “It’s a fake city?” He asked. “Seems a bit wasteful.”

“That’s U.A. for you. It’s the most highly funded school in the country, and it likes everybody to know it.” Kyoka Jiro said. She’d sat next to Akane on the ride over, and wore a tank top that was almost a dress over short pants. Her earlobes hung down like ropes, and were capped with audio jacks.

Her calm front hid the sickly shades of nervous dread, like almost everyone else in the crowd waiting for those giant doors to open, and the test to begin. The whole area was awash with the same tint, and Akane had to work to keep her quirk from activating in the face of such unified emotion. Ranma was the only person there to compete whose confidence was rock solid. He almost glowed from within, but Akane figured that was just typical for him. He had to be confident to use his quirk at all.

The short boy beside Ranma, with a cock’s crest of shiny purple balls instead of hair, kept up a constant chatter that Akane’d tuned out as soon as the bus started moving. He was a different matter entirely. It wasn’t that he was too confident to be nervous, but that he was overwhelmed with excitement, eagerness, and gleeful anticipation to let his anxiety stay for more than a moment at a time.

“So what’s your plan? I figure I can use my quirk, Pop Off, to throw my hair-balls at the robots’ joints. Then I can hit their emergency off buttons without getting in harm’s way.” The boy asked, looking up at Ranma. “You look pretty strong. Have you got a physical quirk? Gonna punch straight through anything that gets in your way?”

“Nah. Tiger on the High Ground is more of a ranged attack. It’s powerful, but I’m not going to use it unless I have to. I just need to score well enough to make up for not having a great school record. My other quirk...” Ranma shook his head and clammed up, realizing too late that he should have stopped talking as Mineta eyed him up shrewdly.

“Two quirks? That’s really rare.” The short boy said.

“Forget I said anything.” Ranma muttered, red-faced. Shame eased into him sideways, insidiously. Slowly. “You ain’t ever seeing what that other quirk does. If I get my way, then nobody will.”

Mineta’s head bobbed up and down as he gave Ranma a thorough scan, before nodding. “With a quirk name like that, you’ve got to be one of those proud martial artists types that likes to save their quirks to use them as trump cards, so if you don’t like it then it must be something that threatens your manly-man machismo.”

“Are you nervous?” Kyoka asked from much closer at hand, causing Akane to gladly turn her attention away from the boy her father wanted her to marry. It was easier to have nothing but dislike for him when she wasn’t watching somebody else run rhetorical circles around him.

“A little.” Akane admitted. “Well, maybe more than a little. I had to promise that if I didn’t get into U.A., I’d go to Furinken. It’s much closer to home.”

The other girl whistled tonelessly. “Cool. I mean, at least you’ve got a backup. My parents kept leaving ads for this professional music academy on the kitchen table, so I’ve got that. You know. If I fail.”

As she spoke, the earphone jacks attached to her ears hung down lower, so that she could wrap one around her finger and twirl it. Akane didn’t need to be able to detect strong emotions to recognize a nervous tic.

“I’ve heard about Furinken, though. Is it really that bad?”

“It’s near my house. My dad’s sure that Principle Kuno is actually a villain who bribed his way out of getting a warrant out for him, or he might just be crazy. Last year he gave everyone in the graduating class a buzz cut as a graduation present, in their sleep.”

Kyoka stared. “Really?”

“Really.” Akane grumbled, and checked to make sure the ribbon holding her long black hair back was tied firmly. “So I really don’t want to go there.”

“I dunno. I had a buzz cut for a while, and it wasn’t bad.”

She did seem vaguely punk-ish. Maybe it was just how her bangs were longer on one side than the other. “What’s your plan for beating the robots?”

“I’ll see if I can break them apart, and if that fails try to hit their off switches with my earphone jacks. You?”

“Smash them.” Akane said, and punched her open palm with her other hand. “I’ve been practicing my family style ever since I could walk. There’s no way a bunch of robots are going to get in my way. I’m going to U.A., and I’m going to be a Hero!”

The other girl slowly started to smile. It was a quieter smile than Akane’s confident grin. “I’m sure you will, unless there’s a choice between you and me. In that case, I’m sure that I’ll get admittance.”

Ranma glowed blue for a moment, not just to Akane’s sight but in a way that everyone could see. The light just hung around him until he rolled his shoulders. “There’s no way I won’t be in the best hero class. 1A, here I come.”

“And there’s no way I’ll not get into U.A.!” Ranma’s conversational partner leaped in. “Not with all the cute girls that are going to be there. I heard that the gym classes are co-ed”

Akane’s skin crawled, and even Ranma seemed uncomfortable for a moment. Kyoka Jiro shared the sentiment.

But then the huge door swung wide, and the entrance exam to attend the greatest Hero school in the country began.

 

[TPK]

Present Mic shouted, “Okay, start!” over the loudspeaker and the great doors swung open soundlessly on their hinges. The whoosh of wind caused by their parting blew back everyone’s clothes, and then there was a crash like a bomb going off when they were stopped by the breaks set into the ground.

Akane raced forward before the last echo faded, taking the lead position in the pack of eager students. She breathed slowly and deeply, taking long practiced strides as she sprinted full-out, but somehow that wasn’t fast enough. She glanced over her shoulder and saw Ranma speed through the crowd like they were only jogging, and when it grew too thick he flipped into the air, planted his hand on a brawny boy’s shoulder, and threw himself over Akane’s head!

He waved as he passed the gate into the cityscape, glancing over his own shoulder as he did. “Good luck!”

Just then, a pack of one point robots swung into view, racing down the street to ambush whoever came in first. The four of them were eight feet tall on a single fat metal wheel, with a sinuous neck that bore a snakelike head, and two large arms carrying shields to protect a pair of multi-barreled guns!

“Look out!” Akane yelled.

The robots swung apart and then converged on the cocky boy, eagerly saying, “Target lock-on! Murder!”

A jolt of dread sprung up in the pack behind her, and Akane pulled on it, coloring her own emotions with that fear and letting its black color seep from her legs. Dread was a kind of fear, the emotion of speed, and it wasn’t an emotion she had much practice using with her quirk, but even if Ranma wa a jerk she couldn’t let him-

The nearest robot swung its big, shield-like arm down, aiming to shatter Ranma’s shoulder. He turned, so slowly, almost casually. Akane accelerated, faster and faster until she was going even faster than Ranma had mere moments before, but she could only watch with disbelief as the robot… missed?

No, it hadn’t missed. Ranma had dodged, pulling himself away from the attack at the last second using the same limb that was trying to crush him. In one smooth motion he swung up into the air and kicked the robot squarely in the camera mounted on the front of its triangular face. Camera guts flew into the air, followed by computer parts. He clasped his hands together, thrust them forward, and blue light flowed out of his body, into a ball the size of his head, then out toward another robot with a sound like a roaring tiger. Where it hit, it threw the second robot back into a third, taking them both to the ground.

He was alright? He was alright!

“Ranma you jerk! Don’t play with my emotions like that!” Akane snarled, furious at being embarrassed. Rage would have been wonderful, a berserk power, but she couldn’t use her own emotions.

Fine.

Punching things would work, and it’d make her feel better too.

The dread was almost faded, her legs nearly their natural color, but there was enough left that when Akane came through the door at breakneck speed, she was able to run behind the sole remaining one pointer from the original ambush instead of hitting it head-on. It had two arms which were almost certainly stronger than she was. If she could use the right emotion, then she’d be able to beat it with raw power, but she couldn’t count on that. A martial artist didn’t rely on chance, and neither did a Hero! She punched into its narrow waist, grabbed something that felt rubbery, and tore it right out. Immediately some kind of slick fluid sprayed out, staining her yellow gi darker. The robot slowed, then slumped over.

Akane looked around, but Ranma was already gone and the other students were quickly vanishing as well, running past her, heading deeper into the mock city to find mock villains for their entirely real fights. Akane watched them for a moment. She saw their determination, their excitement, their fear. It was a riot of color that she’d never yet managed to actually put into words.

She went looking for trouble with the rest, and ran into Kyoko. Her shirt had a tear in the stomach, with an ugly scratch beneath, but the punk girl didn’t pay it any heed. Instead she threw herself to the ground to dodge a burst of gunfire from one of three one point robots -not real rounds, Akane noted in the back of her mind thanks to her father’s training sessions. They didn’t make the right sound when they hit the asphalt.

A quick flurry of punches rocked that robot back, and Akane toppled it by landing a front kick directly on its front plate, crumpling it inward and making something inside whine and pop like a bad light bulb. Meanwhile, Kyoka used her low position to lunge in under another robot’s guard. Her earphone jacks stabbed up under a panel, and the robot deactivated. The one remaining robot wheeled about to flee, but Akane grabbed its arm and used its own circular motion to embed it into the side of a building.

“Are you alright?” Akane asked.

“It took me a while to find an off switch. They changed the location after last year’s exam, so I took a hit I didn’t expect.” Kyoka jammed her earphone jacks into the ground. “I can hear the vibrations the robots make, but while detecting large groups is easy, I don’t think I can risk running into a whole squad of two pointers. Do you want to team up, and we can go after the big concentrations of points? There’s a group of ones walking on legs instead of wheels nearby.”

Akane grinned. “Let’s.”

 

[TPK]

The two point robots were as big as the one point ones, but had a lower center of gravity and greater mobility, because they had four legs splayed out to the sides like a spider’s instead of sitting up high on a wheel.

Akane grasped the difference as soon as she saw the three of them. It was like the one point robots were people fighting from atop unicycles, while the two pointers were standing on their feet. She squared up to them and waited, to examine these new enemies, and almost immediately changed her evaluation of them again.

“They’re slow.” She said, watching their legs move and listening to the high-pitch of their engines. “They move like someone fighting from on top of a really small horse -like martial arts indoor polo.”

“...What did you just say?” Kyoka asked

“They’re less of a threat than the one pointers were!” Akane shouted, and charged. The emotions nearby were bright, but blurred together into a grey mass not unlike what she felt on public transit. There were too many people feeling too many different emotions for any of them to be of use, so when Akane met the first quadruped’s charge, she planted her feet and caught both of its arms!

She gave distance, but slowed the robot’s movements. It was just too strong to be stopped, but a few seconds were all it took for Kyoko to duck under one straining arm and jab an earjack into something that made the whole robot stop. Then the other two robots swung in, one flipping the neutralized bot forward. The two girls split, and it passed between them. Akane grabbed the crossbar of a broken street light and speared the broken end through a robot’s head.

Kyoka disabled the last one, and then said, “No, seriously. Martial arts indoor polo? You’re not serious.”

Akane blushed. “I got a recording of a championship match as a birthday present when I was eleven. I thought the miniature horses were cute.”

The other girl put her hand over her mouth so that Akane could pretend that she wasn’t snickering.

They went off toward a second concentration of the higher-point robots, agreeing without discussion that while they were stronger, their lack of speed and higher payoff made them much better targets, but by the time they reached their destination someone else was already there.

It was Ranma.

There was a certain liquid quality to the way he vaulted over the burst of gunfire. At that moment Akane knew for certain that, though his family practised Anything Goes Martial Arts just like she did, they’d taken it in a completely different direction. His red shirt flapped and twisted along with his body, and it was easy to see why his pants were tied off at the ankle. It was to keep them from flying up to his thighs during the complex aerial twists the Saotome style reveled in.

Rama curled up to spin faster and then cast out, grabbed a head-sized piece of flying rubble, and let it carry him on a completely different trajectory than he’d been on when he first left the ground, letting more bullets pass by him effortlessly.

The two point robot’s guns clunked as they reached the bottoms of their magazines. Their opponent heard the cue he’d been waiting for and charged across the open ground. Suddenly ten feet of distance was far too small! He flickered with the telltale blue glow of his quirk, and blasted one robot aside before kicking the other in the neck. Metal armor ablated and the two point robots locked on. One fired on Ranma again, but once more he slipped away like oil in water, and the bullets hit the second robot instead.

He noticed Akane watching and waved. “How are you doing, Akane?”

She choked. “I’m okay.”

At that Ranma smiled. “How many points have you gotten so far? I’m at 37.”

Aksane hadn’t been keeping track. It was all just happening so fast, and which points were hers and which were Kyoko’s anyway? It was hard to tell with some of them. “I’m doing alright.” She said.

“I’m sure you’re doing fine. This kind of slugging match is right up your alley.” Ranma said, and then ran off with a raised hand and an over-the-shoulder, “Good luck!”

After a few more minutes during which they found progressively fewer and fewer robots, Kyoka said, “This way. I think there’s a couple of two pointers over here.” She led Akane into a space where the road was cracked and partially torn up just as another applicant jogged into view from around another corner.

It was the short boy, what was his name again? He’d told Ranma, hadn’t he?

Mineta stopped and waved his hand over his head rapidly. His motions were all abrupt, twitchy, betraying his nerves even if he wasn’t glowing the pale shade of nervousness. “Hey girls. I’ll talk to you later, sorry. I’m busy. I thought I spotted a robot over here…”

The punk frowned. “You too?” She knelt down to shove her earphone jacks into the cracked concrete floor, and then paused. Mineta glanced as she bent over, and his gaze lingered, eyes narrowed.

“What is it?” Akane asked.

“It’s under us!” Mineta screamed. He snatched a sticky ball from his head, held it high, and when the ground burst and a car-sized robot clambered out like a giant ant emerging from underneath the dirt, he threw it straight and true at one of its leg joints, and immediately followed it up with more -dozens of sticky balls thrown into the exposed workings of its joints and gumming up the works.

Akane slid in front of her ad-hoc partner and crossed her arms in front of her face, weathering the barrage of debris the three point robot kicked up as it burst through pipes, asphalt, and the concrete of the sidewalk, trying to get to a target and crush them before Mineta’s attack made it grind to a halt, so she missed the exact moment her Ranma Saotome arrived on the scene. She still saw most of it.

He dropped out of the sky, probably from the roof of a nearby building, glowing blue and trailing the color to Akane’s sight like a comet. The blue of his quirk lashed out and blasted one of the robot’s legs off. He landed on the balls of his feet and the robot moved, shoving a water pipe out of the ground and spraying Ranma with its contents.

It was still unbelievable, Akane thought.

Where once a broad-shouldered young man with black hair stood was now a slightly shorter redheaded young woman. Her quirk washed over everyone present. Akane had to fight to recognize that the girl didn’t need protecting, even though the bitterness of the thought and the fierce shame glowing in the redhead’s body. Kyoka also froze, but because her enhanced sense of hearing required the same slight differences in the brain that helped Akane see emotions, she also fought through the quirk’s effect after a moment of concentration.

Mineta wasn’t so fortunate. “C-cute!”

He fumbled his grip on the ball he was throwing. It slipped out of his hand mid-throw and went off-course. Ranma, because he was the redheaded girl, spun to face him with an angrily pointing finger raised and a retort on his lips. The black ball hit Ranma squarely between his eyes, and stuck there.

“The heck?” Ranma reached up and grabbed it, but the ball didn’t come off. He added his second hand and staggered in a circle, but that didn’t do anything either. “My hands are stuck now, too!”

“Oh, heheh. That’s one of my Pop Off balls. Isn’t it cool?” Mineta said, blushing.

“Great, sure. Now get it off of me.”

“It’ll dissolve in about twenty four hours. Don’t worry. I can protect y-AGHK!”

Ranma pulled his foot back from his kick and stood up, leaving Mineta bent double. “I said get it off of me! I can barely see around the edges of this thing.” He snapped.

“I can’t!” Mineta wheezed. “The balls my quirk makes are sticky to everyone and everything except for me, and they only dissolve after like a full day when I’m this healthy.”

“Healthy, huh? I ought to pound you into the dust.” Ranma quivered, and then relaxed. “But it was my own stupid fault anyway. This curse, and its stupid quirk…”

“So uh, you mean you’ve got a quirk when you’re a guy and a quirk for when you’re a girl?” Kyoka asked, intrigued. “What is it?”

Akane couldn’t help herself. She felt bad for Ranma, getting stuck like that, but it was kind of funny to see the guy who’d mocked her and humiliated her in their sparring match suffer. “When he’s a girl, everybody who sees him thinks that he’s cute and innocent.”

Mineta said, “Wait, so you really do turn into a-”

“Yes.” Ranma hissed. Now he was trying to scrape the ball off of his face and onto a particularly large piece of rubble. It wasn’t working.

“Let’s cut a deal.” Mineta said suddenly with a shaky smile. “I’ll guide you around to robots. In exchange, since you’re really a guy, you’ll let me sneak a p-”

Ranma’s snarl of anger was only capped by the way Mineta bounced off the wall behind him when Ranma kicked him again, but the short boy rebounded back and slammed face-first into Ranma’s upraised forearms, knocking him over and sliding in the dirt. When the dust cleared, the two were thoroughly stuck together -Mineta by his clothes.

Something on Kyoka beeped. “Our time’s almost up, Akane. Let’s go!”

Akane lingered, yelled, “Good luck Ranma!” And the two of them raced away, looking for more robots to destroy.

Shortly afterward, the timer ran out and the test ended.

 

[TPK]

“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.

 

[TPK]

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.”

 

[TPK]

“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.”

 

[TPK]

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?”

 

[TPK]

What did Akane know about Katsuki Bakugo?

He was confident -that was evident in the way he stood and walked. His outburst in class, demanding to know who got first place in the practical exam, showed that he had pride, and the way that he phrased his demand meant… that he didn’t think he could be anything other than the best without someone interfering? There was no way to tell without getting to know him, and she didn’t need to do that for what she had planned.

Emotions colored the air that Akane moved through, every day dying it new tints of what she explained to other people as colors, except that they didn’t block out the real colors of the world around her. The emotional colors emanated from their owners, mixed, and diffused into blends and wispy swirls that Akane saw by the way they felt to her Quirk as she moved through them.

Most people’s emotions were soft pastels -background noise that blended with their surroundings. It took an intense emotional state to saturate your immediate surroundings with only your own color.

Bakugo’s anger guttered as he walked, cooling off his body and mood at the same time.

He stopped when Akane planted her hands on her hips and leaned forward into his way. “What do you want, extra?” He growled.

“You should calm down. Throwing a fit over not getting first place on the entrance exam’s practical is a little excessive.”

Katsuki Bakugo whirled and slammed his foot down, pushing up into Akane’s face as he snarled like a rabid dog lunging up against a leash. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, telling me what to do?! Who the fuck are you, you fucking busybody piece of shit?! You want excessive? I’ll show you what excessive looks like!”

She leaned back into him, refusing to give an inch. “I’m Akane Tendo, and I know who got the highest score on the practical.”

His eyes flick up and down, evaluating Akane. “...You’re the one?”

“Nope!” Akane popped the P. “My boyfriend did, and he wasn’t even able to look for robots to disable in the last minute of the test because somebody else’s Quirk got his hands stuck to his face.”

The realization of just how badly he’d been exceeded hit Katsuki like a storm cloud made of sour lemons. His eyes were lost in shadow as his mouth puckered up. “You’re a liar.” He rasped, but Akane was already walking away with her hands clasped primly in front of her.

“I’m not.” She said.

Kyoka stopped her as she walked past. “Are you okay?

“Oh sure. I’m fine, but I think Katsuki over there is a little stressed out.”

“Did you really have to wind him up?”

Akane nodded, and turned her head over her shoulder as Aizawa called her to the grip-testing machine, and she made her way over. “Yep. I just realized that even through my Quirk may not make emotions, I can, as long as there’s somebody around with thin enough skin!”

To Akane, dread and despair were different shades of the same color -black. The speed they gave was slippery and fluid, like oil. Joy was bright yellow, like sunshine, and felt like she was dunked in hot water. Strain and overwork were soothed by a massage from the inside out.

It surrounded Katsuki, and she’d gotten close enough that his anger had saturated her Quirk and charged it. It was just like struggling for control of a grapple. If your hands are close to the source of your strength, then you can apply more of it than if you have your hands spread wide out to either side.

Rage was red. Rage was restless. Rage was, in Akane’s mind, fire.

Its edges guttered and flared like the last dregs of a bottle of gas burning out, or an engine running on the last wisps of fumes. It started at her heart, set it hammering, and then raced down her veins and hummed beneath the skin on the soles of her feet and the palms of her hands.

So when she grasped the grip-tester and squeezed, it was with the liberating sensation of a boiler letting off steam. The tester groaned in her hand before switching gears once, and then again before it stabilized and gave Aizawa a number that made him raise an eyebrow.

“That’s better.” He said.

Akane wasn’t worried about the rest of the tests.

[hr]
Some time later, after the end of the tests, Aizawa looked across the class, his gaze lingering on each of the students in turn. Some quivered with fear. Some tried to hide their nerves behind a cool demeanor. Some resolutely refused to believe that they’d be the ones on the bottom, and looked back at him with easy confidence.

...But only one was smiling.

“I lied.” He said, and grinned a corpse-like rictus smile. “It was only a logical ruse to draw out your true potential by upping the apparent stakes of the test. I’m not expelling anyone… today.”

Akane beamed with pleasure as joyous celebration erupted around her. Nothing, nothing, could ruin her day after that.

[hr]
Akane stayed behind after class for a few minutes to talk to Kyoka, and promise to text later, and as a result she missed the first bus back. The next one was just a quarter-hour after that, so she took it instead.

She looked around for Ranma once she got home, and Kasumi directed her to the dojo. Apparently Ranma’d brought someone home to visit, and they were occupied in the training room.

In the dojo, Ranma knelt over a boy with tired eyes and purple hair that swept back away from his face like a tufted lion’s mane. The martial artist was a girl, at the moment. Her uniform shirt was untucked, and she smirked as she shoved the boy’s back down to the ground again with a thud when he tried to sit up.

Happiness. Frustration. Hopeful anticipation. Confidence. A heady mixture hung in the air around them both.

Akane crushed the doorframe as her hand clenched into a fist, startling the two. “Am I… interrupting anything?” She asked far too levelly to really be calm.

The supposed boyfriend rocked back up to her feet and stretched left and right, oblivious to the effect that had on her clothes. “Nah. I’m just showing Hitoshi what he’s got to work towards.”

“I thought you didn’t like boys?” Akane said.

“I don’t. Why’d you say otherwise?”

“It looked to me like you like Hitoshi over there.”

The boy in question sat up with difficulty. His shirt was covered in sweat, and he breathed heavily. “Are you the Akane Ranma told me about? Nice to meet you. I’m Hitoshi Shinso, and I met him in class today.”

Ranma nodded. “Yeah. He was saying some kinda crap about how bad his Quirk is, and then uh. My other one got out, so I decided to shut him up. And sure I can like guys. I just don’t like-like them.”

Shut him up. Heavy breathing. Sweat.

The wood and plasterboard in Akane’s hand crumbled as she ground her fingers around it. Dust and splinters fell to the ground as the puzzle pieces fit together.

“Brainwash doesn’t quite seem so bad when compared to Charming.” Hitoshi agrees. “And then before I knew it she -he- had me in here.”

The name of his Quirk switched the target of Akane’s banking ire away from her new boyfriend, who was apparently the victim of a devious pervert. She narrowed her eyes. “I’m sorry I doubted you Ranma. Step out of the way, and when I’m done beating this creep up I’ll smack some sense into you too!”

Hitoshi blinked. “Wait, what?”

“This is for molesting my boyfriend!” Akane snarled, and leapt.

It took three hours to figure out that it was all a complete misunderstanding, and that Ranma was only showing Hitoshi her moves, not ‘her moves’.

[hr]

Next time, in My Hero Akane: a two-on-two team battle! Akane and Momo versus Kyoka and Mina -fight!

 

[TPK]

“Aizawa said that today we’d have to face even tougher tests. Hopefully nobody gets expelled today, too.” Kyoka said.

Momo Yaoyorozu nodded, equally concerned. “I was sure that it was an empty threat yesterday, but I checked his teacher reviews online. Across the three previous years he taught at U.A., and the three years he teaches classes for, he’s expelled one hundred and fifty-four students.”

Kyoka staggered. “What? How is that even possible?”

“I’m a hard worker. Almost nothing is impossible to someone with the proper drive to do it.” Aizawa said as he loomed over her, having slipping into the classroom with no-one the wiser. Even Akane’d missed him, so marginal was his presence, but now he was unmistakably there. He gave the room a rictus smile, and addressed them all. “Dealing with rumors is tiresome and pointless, so I’ll tell you this. None of you… are currently without potential.

“Strive hard, look forward, and you won’t have to worry about getting expelled. But if you feel like you’re slipping behind, then figure out which staff member is your Quirk councilor, and see them after class. If you ever let your potential reach zero, then I’ll expel you immediately. Being cast away from your dream halfway is cruel, but it’s only a little more cruel than reaching the finish line and finding out that you weren’t even supposed to be running the race.”

No one spoke. They felt like it would be disrespectful not to, after such a revealing monologue from the normally taciturn man.

...One student just didn’t care.

“So when the hell do you leave and our next teacher come in? I don’t fucking care if all these losers get expelled, but I don’t need a pep talk to give a hundred percent.”

Aizawa shrugged. “Whenever I feel like it. My first other class is after lunch.”

Just then, Present Mic swept into the room, buckles jangling and a wide smile on his face. “Hey everybody -it’s time for English!”

The first day of Akane’s regular academic studies came with an almost dreamlike strangeness. In many ways it was just like junior high school. First came homeroom, then English, Math, Japanese, History, which were the same courses that Akane’d gone to for years. Then came lunch, where there was the option to buy high-quality food for cheap prices. ...Except that there was one big difference. Pro Heroes gave the lectures. The sight of the leather and buckle clad Present Mic sedately giving a lecture on sentence structure almost made learning a second language interesting!

But after lunch -that was when the tired eyes and listless note-taking went away, and even the most slackerly of Akane’s classmates sat up and waited eagerly for their teacher to arrive.

Because the teacher for Hero Basic Training was the one and only…

“I aaaam! Coming through the door like a normal person!” The Symbol of Peace, All Might, slammed the classroom door open and strode in. His cape billowed around him, flashing broad swaths of fierce red and noble blue. His costume clung to his body, coloring each ripple of the muscle that composed his heroic frame, because this was the one man in all the world who didn’t need a costume to be a Hero.

The class broke into whispers and hushed exclamations. His name had been on the teacher registry, but seeing him in the flesh made it real.

He was a sight straight out of the previous age, a time before there were Pro Heroes and the support networks that sustained them. He had no gadgets strapped to his waist, no pouches crammed with ways to use his Quirk in different situations.

All Might stood at the lectern at the front of the room and thrust his fists against the golden belt at his waist. “I teach Hero Basic Training, where you train in different ways to learn the basics of being a Hero. This is the class you’ll have the most units of.”

The excitement in the room would have been tangible even without Akane’s Quirk. Everyone was united in rapt amazement as All Might turned, flexed his arms over his head, and then held out a card to the class. “But let’s get right to it! This is what we’ll do today -combat training!”

“Oh yes!” Akane hissed.

The boy with green hair whimpered, but All Might kept going relentlessly as he swept his arm toward the wall. “And you’re going to need these!”

Sections of the wall slid into the room, each holding storage lockers marked with large numbers. “These contain costumes based on your Quirk regististrations, as well as the sketches you submitted with your applications to U.A.. After you change, gather in training ground beta!”

All Might left the room with a snap of his cape and a gleaming smile, and for a moment the entire class simply sat in their seats, stunned. Already? They all thought that one word, or a variation of it. They were already going to wear the costumes they’d sent design notes in for? It was only the second day of class; there was speedy turnaround, and then there was rushing ahead!

The changing rooms didn’t have individual stalls. They had to carry the boxes containing their costumes in, and slot them into a matching spot on the wall there, where there was a locker to hold their uniforms and belongings.

Nobody looked around while they changed. It was a private moment, a threshold toward being a Pro Hero that each crossed individually. Some of them turned their gear over in their hands, examining each piece and recognizing the essence of something that they’d sketched or notated, polished and expanded by the school’s institutional experience. Some rushed to don their costumes, only to pause and stare down at themselves, or touch some facet. Some simply put their costume on and left.

Akane dressed quickly. Her hands were shaky from excitement, overcome by jitters because this was the first time that she felt like she was becoming a Pro Hero. The shock of seeing All Might -All Might!- in her classroom like he belonged there, instead of staring back at her from the television screen or a computer monitor echoed and rebounded inside her.

Her costume, when she looked back at herself in the full-length mirror, was obvious in its inspirations.

The base layer was a blue understocking of a shade bold enough to stand out from a crowd, but pale enough not to look like she’d been soaked in ink. Over that, she wore white calf-high boots and gloves that reached halfway to her elbow, and there was an equally white stripe that ran in a thick line from her right shoulder to her left waist. A slightly tinted visor that sat over her eyes was the crowning touch.

Akane left the changing room looking like a Hero, and feeling like she’d swallowed a live bird that she couldn’t stop from fluttering in her stomach.

She’d arrived before almost everyone else, this time. Katsuki was there, wearing… Akane actually stopped and stared for a second, her own self-consciousness driven out by confusion. U.A. allowed their students to look so… edgy? He had gauntlets that covered his forearms and looked like giant grenades. Then she had to fight down the urge to laugh, because he was also wearing black and red hair clips that looked like jagged butterfly wings, and one of them was off center.

“You might want to check… you know.” She said, and touched the back of her head.

The blond boy grimaced and tried to feel out what the problem was, but only succeeded in making the off angle even worse.

Akane sighed. “Let me.”

“Don’t you fucking try anything funny.”

“Yeah, right.” She fixed the setting of the hair ornament. “Done.”

“Great. Thanks. Now get lost!” He barked. "That low-effort costume is making me look bad just being near me."

Akane stepped away. “Such a winning attitude.”

As the others arrived in ones and twos, Akane noticed something of a trend. Only half the people in the clas wore outfits that looked like something she’d think of when she heard the word Hero. Aside from Katsuki’s villain-chic, she also saw a blond boy in a white gi with a thick tail, a red-haired boy wearing pants with no shirt, and a boy with a craggy head wearing a set of red and yellow exercise shorts and shirt. It was like they’d missed the memo, or something.

If Ranma were here, she bet he'd have a properly heroic costume.

She stared at a boy with white and red hair, split down the middle, in disbelief for almost half a minute before he glared at her, and she looked away in embarrassment. Akane couldn’t help herself. He was wearing dark blue utility clothes with a canvas belt, like he was a plumber or something -not even a Martial Arts Plumbing plumber, but like the guy you called when your drain was clogged!

Kyoka walked up, and Akane almost gave into despair. “Not you too!” She groaned.

“What? I like these clothes.”

“Are those really the same clothes you wore to the practical exam?”

“...No.” Kyoka said.

“You are!”

“No!” The punk girl blushed. “I just based my Hero outfit on that one. This one is reinforced, and there’s extra stuff built in for my Quirk.”

Just then, Denki arrived and Akane’s heart stopped for a moment. He too was wearing what could best be described as casual clothes. “Those had better not be track pants.” She hissed.

“What? Nah. Those would be way too swishy. There’s just a stripe down them because it looks cool.” He’s wearing black pants with a white stripe down them, a white shirt, and a black jacket that was decorated with white lightning bolts.

Akane smiled in relief. “I guess it does tie it all together.”

“All right!” All Might boomed in his outdoor voice, so loud that it bounced off the walls of the room they were in, and gave him a slight reverb effect. It instantly silenced the many small conversations that had cropped up. “This will be an indoor battle test! Villain cleanup usually happens in the outdoors, but there are far more incidents that occur indoors. Imprisonment, house arrest, black market deals… in this Heroic society any Villain with a brain is lurking in the shadows! For this test, you’ll separate into Villain and Hero groups for a two on two team battle!”

A girl with a wide face, hunched posture, and green costume asked “What about foundational training?”

“This is foundational training!” Every other student spoke up with their own question, but the number one Hero raised a clenched fist up to his chest and visibly strained. “Ah-ha! What enthusiasm, but I can’t hear any of you if you all speak at once!”

He pulled a piece of paper out of his sleeve held it up to read, tiny in his heroically proportioned hands. “For this training, we’ll have some Villains guard a dummy nuclear weapon that they intend to deploy, inside a fake multi-story building in the next room. The Heroes must engage them and their nefarious scheme before it’s too late. If the Heroes capture the Villains or reach the bomb before time runs out, then that’s their win. If the Villains capture the Heroes or run the timer out, then they win.”

Akane shuddered with excitement, eyes bright and shining. That sounded like what Heroes did a decade ago when her father was young and active, fighting for justice in a world where cruel and perverse Villains held the power!

She was drawn out of her daze when the teacher announced- “And finally, team J is Akane Tendo and Momo Yaoyorozu. Now let’s get cracking!”

Akane immediately looked around for Momo, but she was interrupted by All Might’s very next sentence. For the first match, Tendo and Yaoyorozu are the Hero Team, and Jiro and Ashido are to be the Villain Team!”

[hr]
Momo Yaoyorozu wore a costume similar in coverage to a gymnastics leotard, if it had an extremely deep v-neck. A double-stacked utility belt hung low on her hips, like a miniskirt. She wasn’t built like a gymnast, though. She was lithe but not slender, and approached Akane with squared shoulders and a purposeful stride while the Villain team got a few minutes to set themselves up inside the building.

“We should plan our strategy of attack.” She said. “Do you know anything about the Villains’ Quirks?”

Akane nodded. “Kyoka’s earlobes are her Quirk. She can use them to push vibrations into solid objects, and can feel vibrations through them too. During the Entrance Exam, she used them to find robots for us to fight. I don’t know anything about Mina, other than that she can make slippery acid.”

Momo nodded. “I assume Kyoka knows how your Quirk works as well. Mina can use her acid to skate across the ground like ice skates, which means that the villains have both an information-gathering Quirk and a movement-enhancing Quirk. Accounting for the vibrations we give off by walking through an artificial structure is going to be the most difficult part to plan. If we split up, and I create some kind of damping shoes, then we could try to sneak in from two different directions to reach the bomb.”

“I’d rather not sneak in.” Akane protested, but was quickly overwhelmed by the diatribe.

“If we don’t approach from an unexpected angle, then we’ll be walking into a prepared trap. Given Kyoka’s ability to detect us coming, any attack launched from a single place will let them ambush us at a place of their choosing.”

The other girl paused, and then exhaled loudly, closing her eyes as she visually composed herself. “I apologize. I leapt right into planning around our opponents, and skipped over more immediate concerns. My Quirk is Creation. It allows me to create any object I know the composition of by extruding it from my skin. The process is fueled by my metabolism, so I cannot make too much matter too quickly.”

With the conversation reset, Akane felt more at ease. She’d seen the nervous colors around Momo before, but seeing her take time to assert a mask of cool collection helped her make her own.

“My Quirk is called Variable Glow. It gives me various effects to different parts of my body based on which emotions are strongest in the people around me, but with just three people to draw on that part of it isn’t going to be useful for much. I can also use it to ‘feel out’ where people are, because I can sense the effect their emotions have on the part of me that gets charged.”

Akane breathed deeply, and looked her partner in the eyes. “And I think we don’t need to worry about Kyoka detecting us. I say we go right through the front door, and make them worry about us!”

 

[TPK]

When Akane was ten years old, she told her father that she wanted to be a Hero. He said that she was already his hero, much to Nabiki’s disgust, and the way her sister’s face scrunched up like a wrinkled plum helped the scene stick in her memory through the next five years. Once Akane clarified what she meant -that she wanted to be a Pro Hero- her father had agreed to train her to become one, but he had a single condition first.

He asked her why she wanted to be a Hero.

Her immediate answer, that she wanted to save people, earned her only a comedicaly overstated expression of stern fatherly disapproval and an instruction to think about it more. So Akane thought about it during dinner, and during school the next day, and over the next several days until she finally realized what her answer was. Coming to an answer in that direct, too-honest way children have, she pointed at the television. Both news anchors on screen leaned forward with honest joy in their eyes, ranting and raving as the screen behind them showed All Might’s latest act of heroism.

“I want people to look at me that way.” She said.

Soun Tendo placed his big hand on her shoulders and chuckled. “At least you’re being honest about it. Just remember to always have a goal in mind, and work toward that goal. As long as you’re moving toward a goal, you’re not ...backsliding.”

“What does backsliding mean?”

“It means that you’ve got to leave your friends and most of your family behind, and run off into the wilderness to avoid getting in trouble.”

Even now, five years later, Akane knew that her father’s advice was still good. Professor Aizawa had mirrored it, if not word-for-word then in general meaning. Perhaps that was what caused her tendency to run headfirst into any challenge in her way, no matter how dark or difficult, and trust that things would work out so long as she faced it squarely and put her all into the effort.

...But it was probably just that she was an aggressive tomboy.

-----

Two things were immediate apparent as Akane charged headlong through the front of the concrete simulation building, with Momo close behind her. First, the inside of the training structure was completely bare. The walls, stairs, and ceiling were all smooth grey cement. It would be hard for their opponents to hide with the rooms so empty.

“Watch for blind corners. They’re probably waiting to ambush us once we get closer to the objective, and the avenues we can approach by are limited.” Momo said from close behind her.

“Right!”

They hit the stairs and Momo slowed, but Akane still didn’t feel anyone else nearby, so she leaped them two at a time…

And when she stepped on a patch of slippery white good on the second flight, all her weight came down on that one foot, which slid out from under the overconfident girl and sent her tumbling face-first into the concrete stairs! Akane barely got her arms up in time to keep her face from breaking her fall, and the harsh angles of the stone steps bit into her skin above her gloves, where the fabric was thinner.

She tore her uniform top’s sleeves off and dabbed the acid away from her boot before it ate complete through it. She froze for an instant, when she remembered that there was a big T.V. screen in the observation room where her classmates were watching, but she still had most of her top on. It was basically just a tank top now, right?

“I thought you said that Mina and Kyoka weren’t going to bother guarding the first floor?!”

Momo’s response was immediate and firm. “They aren’t guarding the first floor. Mina will be with Kyoka. If she comes out to ambush either of us, then that negates the advantage of Kyoka’s information-gathering. This is just meant to slow us down. I… should have warned you. I’m sorry.”

“Well it’s working.” Akane snapped, but then flushed red with embarrassment. “...No. I get it. It’s my own stupid fault for being sloppy.”

The other girl’s face lit up, the shame vanishing as Akane accepted the blame. “Let’s just get through this. It looks like that’s four or five steps covered in acid. I could make a sponge, but trying to pick up acid with a sponge sounds like it would take a while. Perhaps a base? But making enough to walk up the stairs would reduce my ability to make anything else, and if the next two stairs are also trapped in the same way, then my Quirk would be almost used up by the time we reached the top floor.”

“I could try jumping it, with a running start, but I don’t know if you could make that distance.” Akane said.

Momo narrowed her eyes, and glanced at the girl in blue and white. She was athletic, but not the lean kind. Akane was built powerfully, for a girl. “You’re onto something. Just let me… Yes! Akane, if you clasp your hands together on the ground and face away from the stairs?”

Akane recognized what she wanted to do. “Oh yeah!”

Momo took as many steps back as she could in the staircase, breathed in, and then ran forward with two long strides. The third landed squarely on Akane’s laced-together fingers, and when she heaved up with her whole body she sent Momo soaring up over the entire flight of stairs to land safely on the next floor.

“Good job!”

Akane grinned as her partner gave her a thumbs up, and then she backed up for her own running leap. She kicked off the wall halfway up, and landed heavily beside Momo. If it were Ranma here then he’d have taken the whole staircase in two bounds, but she wasn’t him. She just had to keep getting better. “Let’s go.”

The second floor was the same as the first, full of large rooms that they ran through quickly, divided by doorways that Momo checked with a little mirror on an extendable pole. The stairs were coated in Mina’s acid again, but they knew how to circumvent that trap, so they barged into the upper floor with almost a minute and a half left on the timer.

The top floor of the building was a long hall with big square pillars running down both sides, ideal for sneaking around and hiding in, and sure enough as soon as the Heroes crossed through the door they saw that Kyoka was the only other person present.

The faux-Villain saw them. “Now!” She yelled, and ran to close in.

A flash of excitement warned Akane that Mina had hidden behind a pillar and was now behind them. “I’ve got your back.”

“Then I’ll take the front!” Momo grasped at the bare skin showing at her side, and when a handle grew from her skin she grasped it. By the time the distance between she and Kyoka was closed, she held a wooden practice sword in both hands.

“Ha!” She struck down at Mina’s head with a smooth, powerful blow, and the other girl backpedaled, only to lunge back in close and stick her Quirk-altered earlobe into Momo’s upper arm. The arm vibrated with a two-strike beat, spasming and making her drop her sword.

Kyoka kicked the weapon away and fouled Momo’s legs, dumping her on the ground. “What you felt was my heart beating. I can do more than hear with my earphone jacks; I can broadcast and amplify the rhythms my heart makes whenever I jab them into something.”

Momo looked back over her shoulder as she scrambled away from her opponent, and saw Mina hastily sweep her arms left and right, flinging acidic slime in wide arcs to keep Akane back. Already the martial artist’s costume was damaged, several blotchy lines eaten into it that showed reddened skin beneath. If she got any closer, where the splashes were thicker and less spread out, then a bit of irritated skin and damaged cloth would be the least of her worries.

She didn’t have enough time to create anything large or complex, so-

Kyoka close in again, and used her heavy boots to kick the other girl in the side, interrupting her train of thought with sharp pain. “Oof!”

Grappling would be bad. Kyoka has four grabbing limbs, and if she got one of her earphone jacks in front of her eyes then that was a kill-shot. Momo’d be ruled disqualified from the match without accomplishing anything. That couldn’t happen. It wasn’t supposed to be that way. She had to do something!

In desperation, she reached for the pattern most familiar to her Quirk -Matryoshka dolls. The little Russian nesting dolls rattled onto the ground her, and with one smooth motion Momo slid several over to Akane. “Throw them!” She yelled, then leapt to her feet and followed her own advice.

Kyoka ducked and the doll missed, cracking against the pillar behind her, but when the doll hit it didn’t pop open to reveal a second doll. Fine white powder fell across her back, released when the doll broke. “What’s…”

“It’s alkaline powder, to neutralize the pH of the acid.” Momo revealed, her confidence now returned.

Akane stomped on one of the dolls, sending a puff of dust into the air around her. She noticed that the acid stopped hissing and eating into the floor wherever the contents of the doll settled.

Mina gritted her teeth and prepared to throw more acid, but Akane pegged another doll right into her chest like it was a softball. She squeezed her eyes closed until the cloud cleared, but Akane dove straight in and hit her in the side of the head, ringing her head like a bell and sending the acid-spraying Hero down for the count.

The only member of the Villain team still standing squared off against the two Heroes. “You still have to get through me to get to the bomb.” She said.

-----

“Hero team: victory by combat!” All Might boomed over the P.A. system moments later.

After a short check-in with Recovery Girl, a shriveled-up old Hero who could heal wounds with a kiss, and a longer lecture on how to perform emergency first aid for blunt trauma to the head, the dangers of inhaling alkaline dust, and proper treatment for small puncture wounds, the four girls rejoined the class in the observation room -Akane after changing back into her school uniform due to costume damage.

“I hope our fight didn’t engender any hard feelings.” Momo said to the Villain team members.

Mina laughed, a loud and bubbly sound. “No way. That move with the Russian dolls was slick.”

“...That was actually an accident. I needed a container, and was going to make something more like a flash-bang, but I started making wooden dolls by mistake and couldn’t change partway through.” Momo admitted sheepishly.

“I thought it was kind of cool, like a visual flare.” Kyoka said.

“You’re a little too green to be worrying about finishing moves, but keep that trick in mind, Yaoyorozu. Sometimes unpredictability is a Hero’s greatest asset in a fight. Being able to hide the true nature of an attack drastically increases- well you don’t need to worry about that yet either, but I suppose it’s no surprise that the best in this match was Momo Yaoyorozu!”

Momo blushed, but stared straight ahead and accepted the praise without downplaying it.

“Miss Tendo, your can-do attitude and willingness to charge in are excellent traits for a Hero to have, but it was only Yaoyorozu’s planning and ability to react to unexpected circumstances that let you achieve your objective when confronted with a Quirk you couldn’t punch through. As I am well aware, there are some Villains you can’t take down by running up and socking them in the chin. If you can’t make your individual strengths work, then you need a way to change the situation to let you apply those strengths.

“Kyoka Jiro? Excellent use of your Quirk to identify the situation from afar. Sensory Quirks are extremely valued for a reason, but it looks like you need to work on your grappling, so that you can really clinch it -HA! Mina Ashido, you recognized which opponent you were suited to counteracting and did so with a well-timed ambush, but you relied too heavily on your Quirk. There are many situations where the use of acid is unacceptable to a Hero, but fortunately U.A. is here to help you all shore up those weak spots and shine up your good ones!”

All Might thrust his hands against his hips and his sheer joy almost beamed out of him in visible waves. Akane did see them. “Our next match is… Shoto Todoroki and Eijiro Kirishima versus Katsuki Bakugo and Izuku Midiyora! Todoroki and Kirishima shall be the Villains, and Bakugo and Midiyora the Heroes. Villains, please proceed to the next room, where there is an undamaged simulation building prepared for you.”

The timid-looking boy with green hair squeaked, and Katsuki almost choked on his own tongue.

-----

The current match was displayed on the screens, one dedicated to each each student participating in the round, but since the two teams hadn’t split up the effect was more of there being two camera angles on each team.

“They don’t seem to like each other much.” Kyoka said.

“That seems to be an understatement. This could prove an issue for their effectiveness. I’d go so far as to say that if they don’t start cooperating more, they’ll lose no matter how powerful they are individually.” Momo hummed and tapped her chin as, on screen, Katsuki leveled a grenade-shaped gauntlet at the outer wall of the building and blew a hole to enter through. He rounded on Izuku, grabbed him by the collar of his costume, and pinned him against the wall as he leaned in close.

Akane shrugged. “Nah. This is just a guy thing.”

Momo pursed her lips and leaned forward in concentration. “This doesn’t seem like a boy thing. Admittedly I don’t know many boys, but doesn’t seem normal.”

“It’s something I see a lot in Nerima. Two guys who actually like each other and never actually get along, but who just click when things get hard. It’s shonen.”

Kyoka frowned as, onscreen, Izuku stepped into Katsuki’s personal space and almost screamed something at him. “I…”

“Non shonen-ai!” Akane hissed. Then, after a pause to let her brain recognize what she just said and look back at the screen, she flushed beet red. “...Well. Maybe shonen-ai does fit.”

“P-perhaps we should ask them?” Momo whispered.

“I couldn't.” Akane whispered back.

“I bet I can get Denki to do it.” Kyoka lowered her voice to match, and glanced over at the blond boy across the room, who saw and shot her a pair of finger guns.

The other two nodded, and the pact was sealed.

-----

A week later, the black bruise around Denki Kaminari’s left eye had turned an interesting shade of yellow, but he hadn’t held a grudge over what he thought was a ‘sick prank’ for very long. He’d managed to get the seat across the aisle from Mina on the bus, and was happily gossiping with her about the special rescue training they were about to get at an offsite location.

Akane sat quietly and looked out the window, worried about how she’d handle the training. Of course she’d do her best, but she hadn’t put much thought toward that aspect of heroism before. Was there anything she could do better than a normal first responder?

As Katsuki turned around in his seat to shout at the froglike girl and Denki took a turn at prodding the volatile boy, a girl with an honest face and decal-like blush marks high on her cheeks laughed at the show. Her name was Ochaco, probably, but Akane hadn’t really gotten to know her yet.

The simulation area itself, they saw once they got there, was inside a vast geodesic dome. From the entrance plaza, Akane saw zones that harbored many artificially created disaster scenes, from mudslides to sinking ships and toppled office buildings.

Izuku and Ochaco both cheered at the arrival of a Hero wearing something like a space suit, except for the skinny ankles and comfortable hiking shoes sticking out of the cut-short pants. “It’s the space Hero, No. 13!”

“Wow! I’ve always liked No. 13!”

He approached after a short conference with Aizawa, who was the teacher accompanying class 1A on the field trip. “Before we begin, I have just one thing to mention. Or two. Or three. Or four. I’m certain you’re all aware, but my Quirk is called “Black Hole”. No matter what material gets sucked in, it’s all disintegrated.”

Izuku, who Akane was starting to suspect might be a little obsessed with Pro Heroes, said “It’s a perfect Quirk for getting rid of wreckage and saving people injured by disasters!”

No. 13 clumsily nodded in his bulky suit. “Yes… However, it is also a power that could easily maim or kill if misused. In that way it is the same as all of your Quirks, and the Quirks of many other people. This is why society requires the public use of Quirks to be regulated, and those regulations enforced. So please, don’t forget that all of you hold the power to do great harm intrinsically within. During last week’s trial of battle with All Might, you learned firsthand just how dangerous your Quirks are.”

Some students shifted guiltily, and avoided looking at those they’d injured. Akane considered the mechanics of her Quirk in particular, and shivered.

But then the bulky Hero raised his arms and boomed in a much more jovial voice. “But let’s treat today as a fresh start, a day to learn how to use your Quirks to save human lives instead of harm them!”

But there was an unexpected observer.

A speck of black, ragged at the edges, came into being further within the plaza. It grew, slowly at first to just the size of a human head, at which point Aizawa noticed and turned to look at it.

A face stared back at him.

The thing that stood out about the face the most was the hand spread across it. It was a human hand, and though everything past the wrist was missing it still clung there like a spider, or a gas mask. Lank grey-blue hair spilled around the fingers, between which two beady red eyes met Aizawa’s alarm with a kind of understated amusement ...and anticipation.

The blackness, now visibly a kind of inky fog, fluttered out at an astonishing rate, wide enough to let a wide assortment of horrifying figures come through at a casual pace. The man with a hand on his face was quickly overtaken by others -a man with antelope horns, a woman with feathery hair, and many many more that seemed more like villains in a weekly adventure show than real people. One was a barely-humanoid hulk of muscle with no skull around his brain, and a mouth like a shark’s, that even the others gave a wide berth. They dressed in homemade costumes whose every detail showed a kind of grisly obsession with accentuating how distinct they were from the unconscious understanding of a ‘normal’ person, and they flowed around the first man like he was a boulder sunk into a shallow stream.

Aizawa shouted, “Huddle together and don’t move!”

Akane was slow to recognize what was happening. She was so used to taking her cues from the emotional states of those around her, and there were so many good emotions around that her teacher’s sudden spike of sickly fear didn’t register immediately. Nothing was wrong because everyone was happy, or looking forward to something with positive anticipation, or at least was just neutral and confused.

But then the mood of those near her started to shift.

“No. 13, protect the students!” Aizawa ordered, and snapped open a pair of goggles that he slotted over his eyes.

“None of you move!” He repeated, and he was afraid -so afraid- and angry. “Those are villains!”

Within the dark fog there was a shape of even darker fog, lit by pale light that outlined his body. “...Eraserhead and No. 13. According to the curriculum we procured yesterday, All Might was supposed to be here, and yet…”

“Where is he?” The man with the hand on his face asked in a low, scratchy voice. “We went through all this trouble and rustled up so many of us to bring along. I didn’t arrange all of this just for All Might, the Symbol of Peace, not to be here.”

Aizawa loosened his scarf and prepared to fight as the Villains’ ringleader kept talking.

“This is such a let-down. I even found a guest fighter with a personal grudge against one of the kids.” He paused a moment. “Kurogiri, where is he?”

“One moment.” The outlined figure vanished, and reappeared a moment later. “Here he is.”

One last person walked out of the fog.

He was tall and broad-shouldered, but not so much so that it was the result of a Quirk, with black hair and tanned skin. He was well-built, but only avoided being stocky by virtue of his height. He wore a dark yellow shirt, black pants, a spotted yellow bandana across his forehead, and carried a large red umbrella in one hand.

He boy drove his umbrella point-first into the ground and chipped the stone floor, and glared balefully at the assembled class 1A. “Ranma Saotome! I’m here to get justice for everything you’ve done to ruin my life -so prepare to die!”

 

[TPK]

Joy and fear, joy and fear. All around Akane Tendo were joy and fear, mixing and rising in uneven equilibrium.

“How is this possible?”

“One of them must have a quirk that let them infiltrate the campus. But is this the only place they’re attacking, or are they at the other parts of U.A. as well?”

Professor Aizawa interrupted her classmates’ nervous chatter, “An isolated space away from the main campus… at a time when a class is scheduled to be here… They must have a solid objective. If their leader says that they’re here for All Might, then the evidence supports the notion that he’s telling the truth. No. 13! Evacuate the students and try calling the school. These villains knew how to get around automatic sensors, so there might be an electromagnetic Quirk in the mix who’s interfering.”

He glanced at Denki. “And Kaminari, try to use your Quirk to contact U.A.”

“There’s too many of them! Even if you suppress their Quirks, your combat style is ambush-focussed. With this many of them-” Izuku said.

“A Hero always has another trick up their sleeve.” Aizawa cut him off. “No. 13, I’m counting on you.”

And then, before anyone else could object, he dove toward the villains on the plaza below. Two of them raised nostrils that sprayed poison and fingers that ended in pistol barrels, laughing and swapping banter, inflated with their own chummy happiness at the thought of killing.

But their Quirks didn’t fire.

Akane watched with the rest, frozen in place by the sudden shock of violence interrupting a formerly peaceful scene, as Aizawa swept into them. He dove between them, looping his capture scarf’s fully-unraveled length around their necks and bashing their heads together. A huge man covered in rocky growths, a fourth villain, and a fifth all rushed forward, but the Hero wove between them with graceful motions that looked almost… familiar.

“We’ve got to evacuate! This is no time for gawking.” No. 13 said as he hustled the group back toward the entrance, pulling Akane away from watching as Aizawa -no, in that moment he was the Pro Hero Eraserhead, not just their homeroom teacher- faced off against an ever-growing number of villains.

Their group stopped as another patch of black fog erupted in front of the doors, and the villains’ teleporter solidified out of the greater mass in front of the Space Hero. All that was truly visible were his glowing eyes and the faintest outline of his body. He said, “I’m afraid I can’t allow that. I apologize for the interruption, but we are the League of Villains. It was rude of us to intrude without introducing our group first, but we took it upon ourselves to take such drastic action as this in order to engage with mister All Might, the ‘Symbol of Peace’.”

He spoke like some kind of anime butler; polite, modest, murderous. “We were wondering if we might be allowed the opportunity to extinguish him, you see. Was he not supposed to be here at this juncture? Perchance something has been altered -ah well. Setting that aside…”

Several students leapt forward even as No. 13 raised a finger, Quirk primed and ready to use. Katsuki was the fastest. He thrust his hands forward and detonated an explosion so big it swept Akane’s hair back, but the black mist wasn’t harmed, only parted for a moment before it flowed back together.

“That was quite perilous of you to attempt. That’s only as expected, however. Though you are mere student Heroes, not yet fully grown, you are the golden eggs our society so values.”

“Get away from him!” No. 13 screamed, panic clear even through his costume’s voice modulator.

But that was too little, and far too late. The villain erupted into blackness that surrounded Class 1A almost instantly, and his voice came from all points within it simultaneously. “You will be scattered.”

The mist swelled irregularly, taking people within it. When it receded they were gone- Momo, Izuku.

“...And tortured.”

-The shirtless red haired boy, Tsuyu.

“...And slain.”

The guy with the arms, Iida, janitor boy.

Akane.

[hr]
When the darkness receded, she stood in the shadow of a leaning building. Four rows of windows hung overhead, and the cracked street around her was scattered with office supplies that had fallen out of the partially-toppled building. The other ruins were tilted in different directions, as if damaged in some climactic battle that had only recently passed through.

Lights flickered on, water began to leak, and small explosive charges threw dust into the air as she watched, their automatic sensors detecting the presence of someone inside the simulation zone and activating the default programming.

“Is anybody else here?” Akane shouted.

Stone cracked and slid against stone, and she turned around as three sources of emotion came into her range from the same direction as the sound. Three people stood silhouetted on the top of the building across the street. As she watched, two vaulted the lip of the roof and half slid half ran down the angled side.

“Looks like we’ve got a baby Hero.” The first laughed. He was a tall man in a long black coat that had dirty stains down the front. The knife in his hand was bright, polished and clean as if to contrast with the disrepair of his clothes.

The second villain looked like someone Akane might bump into on the train. He was a short man dressed like he was on his way to an office job, except for the ski mask pulled over his misshapen head, and the lack of protective gloves over his clawed hands.

Akane squared up, and took a deep breath. She tried to put everyone else out of her mind. Professor Aizawa, Momo, everyone else -they’d be okay. They’d have to be okay.

“If you run away, then I won’t chase you. I’m looking for my classmates, not a fight, but if you get in my way...” She said forcefully, but she couldn’t help but be off put by their emotions. They were happy, just like the crowd of villains in the square had been. Why were all of these villains so excited, so filled with positivity? Villains should be mean, some internal part of Akane insisted. "Where was the anger, the hatred, the anxiety? Akane's eyes saw danger, but her Quirk said their emotions were the same as a kid at a candy store.

On the roof, the third villain chuckled. She had a resonant voice, and was as wide as the other two put together. “You shouldn’t have shouted, girl. Don’t you know that the tallest nail… gets hammered down!”

With a grunt of exertion, she raised her arm and threw something. Her arm unfolded at the elbow, and then unfolded again! It was twice as long and twice as jointed as a normal arm, and it threw so quickly that only the momentary spike in glee warned Akane to dodge the projectile swiped downward. It clanged against the street beside her, a multi-pronged fish hook the size of her head.

Akane stared at the barbed hooks, transfixed by the brutal sight of them for a critical moment. No one had ever tried to really hurt her before, but that woman -if the student hadn’t dodged then she’d have been caught by one of those finger-length spikes.

The woman yanked her long arm to the side, and sent the hook flying through the air at Akane again, but she caught the rope instinctually. The villain yanked on her line, trying to break her hold, but Akane clenched her fists and dug in her heels. She pulled back, yellow light glowing around her for an instant and refreshing her stamina, and tore the weapon away from the fat villain, who swore and ran away!

Then the other two were on her, with knives and tearing claws.

The tall villain stabbed down clumsily, and years of training took over. Akane stepped in close, grabbed his wrist, and shoved his elbow until it popped. He screamed, then gagged for air as she elbowed his gut and crumpled his diaphragm.

Akane rounded on the short man when he ran at her from the side, arms-outstretched to grab and claw through her costume. She stepped aside and swept his leg. They weren’t happy any more, and that felt right. There was something in that idea, that rightness that didn’t quite coalesce into words. Not yet.

And then the feeling slipped away, leaving her with two beaten villains, one defeated and fleeing beyond her ability to catch her, and no injuries. It felt surreal, unnerving, like a dojo match had just ended. The fact that they’d all tried to actually hurt her didn’t feel like something that had actually happened.

It was over. Was this what being a Hero was like, Akane wondered. Did All Might just show up, beat the villains, and not feel the impact until later?

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw another swirling cloud of black mist. Akane shook her head to clear it, putting aside those thoughts for later, and focussed on the present. Anyone could come through there, she thought.

So it was a surprise when the villain who walked through the teleporter’s effect was the one wearing the yellow shirt, carrying an umbrella, and with a vendetta against someone Akane knew.

He stared at her for a moment, and then introduced himself. “Ryoga Hibiki.”

“Akane Tendo.”

The villain narrowed his eyes. “You’re a martial artist.”

Akane looked at the way the boy stood, how he carried his weight, and the way he held his umbrella. She didn’t know any martial arts that used umbrellas as weapons, but it looked like she’d just found one. “So are you. What are you doing, working with those villains?” She asked.

Ryoga pursed his lips. “Revenge. I’m honor-bound to destroy Ranma Saotome for what he did to me. He’s such a self-important ass that there’s no way he doesn’t go to the best Hero school in the country, and be in the top class.”

“Well he’s not here.”

“No, but you are. I’m not like those crazy people following that hand guy’s orders, though. You’re not Ranma, so if you don’t get in my way then I’ll pretend I didn’t see you.”

“I’m not going to do that. Who else have you met?” Akane asked, hoping for news and dreading it at the same time.

“Pheh!” Ryoga spat on the ground in a brief display of contempt. “Some coward ran for it, but I showed him.”

“Who!?”

“It was that guy in all the armor, for all the good it did him. He got away, but nothing ticks me off like somebody trying to run away from a fight.”

Iida, the class rep?! Visions of the straight-laced boy seriously hurt flashed through her mind, and Akane snarled as she firmed up her stance. “Attacking someone from behind… how dishonorable can you get! Someone like you has no business learning martial arts, if you’re only going to use it to attack those weaker than you.”

Ryoga’s face twisted, and showed a smasm of rage. “And what does a Hero in training know about honor? Everyone knows that Heroes are just in it so they can lord their status over normal martial artists.”

“That’s not true.”

“Then why do you want to be a Hero?”

To be popular. To be famous. To be looked up to. Akane bit her tongue, and tried not to feel ashamed of her motivations. Shame turned around in her belly, and came out as spitting anger as she charged in to attack. “That’s none of your business! All that matters is that I’m not going to let you hurt anyone else!”

The other martial artist widened his stance and then jabbed forward with his umbrella as Akane closed the distance.

She slapped at the umbrella with a flash of one white-gloved hand, and was shocked when it barely moved. It had too much momentum to care about such a light blow. She tried to dodge but Ryoga turned the point of his thrust to follow her, and hit her in the shoulder so hard that she spun off to the side. Her costume’s tough fabric tore, and the line the umbrella’s spike dragged across her upper arm burned like fire.

Akane halted her spin and regained her stance, but Ryoga was already on her, refusing to let her regroup. He leapt into the air and slammed the hideously heavy umbrella down again, this time like it was an oni’s iron club. She caught it in both hands, barely halting the savage blow, and saw her mistake as soon as she did.

Ryoga only had one hand on his weapon. He struck her in the side with his right fist, and sent the girl to the ground in pained heap.

He stood over her, stone-faced, deep anger and frustration burning out of him like steam from a boiling kettle. “You want to help your classmates? Fine. Tell me where Ranma is, and I’ll …Wait. Kurogiri teleported everyone around randomly! Gah! Why didn’t I think of that earlier?”

Then there was screaming, a woman’s scream. She fell out of the air on a ballistic arc, and almost hit Akane where she lay wheezing for breath. Ryoga opened his umbrella and deflected her -it was the fat woman with the extra long right arm, from earlier!

Up on the overhanging building, staring down at them with one foot on the ledge, was a familiar boy with messy blond hair and an edgier costume than most of the villains wore. Katsuki Bakugo snarled, “Oi! The only person allowed to have a grudge against Ranma is me! No half-baked villain of the week with a vague motivation is going to steal my screen time!”

….Akane hadn’t thought she’d ever be glad to hear Katsuki screaming, but it was that kind of day.

 

[TPK]

Katsuki Bakugo dropped to the ground with his arms outspread, blasting the air around him with explosions to slow his fall at the moment before landing. He sneered at Akane as he walked between her and Ryoga. “What’s with that sappy look? I’m not doing this for you, you shitty Power Ranger knock-off.”

“I don’t…” Akane said, but the way Ryoga averted his eyes somehow hurt worse than her classmate’s insult. Maybe the villain had given her the worst beating she could remember, and maybe he didn’t respect her as a martial artist, but…

Why was she feeling bad that he thought she looked like a Power Ranger again? “And you look like some kind of pervert, but you don’t see me complaining! Was your inspiration Midnight, or Mt Lady?” She snapped back.

“What’s wrong with Mt Lady?” Katsuki growled.

“You are a pervert!” Akane gasped. “...I don’t know if I want to get rescued by a pervert. I need to think about this.”

“You don’t get to choose if I rescue you! You lost, so you should stay down and watch me beat this mustard hobo.”

Akane watched, mouth agape in outrage, as Katsuki turned back toward Ryoga, who raised his umbrella in challenge. “Have you seen Ranma since you were seperated?”

“Like I’m telling you shit.” The other boy drawled.

“Fine.” Ryoga said. He whipped his umbrella open and spun it through the air. It whistled alarmingly as it skittered off the ground. Katsuki vaulted over it, but Ryoga’d followed his weapon in. He came up under the student, only to be flung down onto his back when Katsuki blasted the air beneath him to gain space.

Katsuki turned, now at an oblique angle to Akane and the villain. He held both of his special gauntlets up and gave both chambers. Twin explosions lit up, centered on the villain. “Die!”

Ryoga scrambled out of the smoke, singed but not taken out, his umbrella’s skeletal remains held in one hand. Scraps of the fabric still clung to it, but he tossed it away without a second thought, instead tearing several headbands free and throwing them with just as much force and skill as the umbrella. One hit Katsuki’s gauntlet when he held it up to block, and the tough guard cracked!

As the smoke from the explosions cleared, Akane’s classmate spat on the ground, sneered down at his damaged equipment, and kicked it off to the side where it wouldn’t foul his footing. She saw him weigh that information and sort it away. He’d be less effective now, unable to risk using the damaged gear. He unclipped it, and let the heavy thing clatter to the pavement.

“Give up and tell me where you last saw Ranma.” Ryoga said. “You couldn’t take me down with both of those. You’re not going to do it with one.

“I don’t need both hands to take a bit character like you down.” Katsuki said, but he wasn’t stupid, just proud. His eyes flicked around, looking for a way to gain an advantage, and then he sneered. “Why don’t you give up, and spare me the hassle?”

“The only other person here is another Hero in training, and I beat you both. You won’t suffer damage to your image by giving up. You can even tell yourself that you’re saving that girl over there, instead of saving your own skin.” Ryoga must have thought that he’d already won, but he said the wrong thing.

“Image? Don’t open your mouth if all that’s going to come out is bullshit like that. It’s not about publicity or looking good. It’s about being the best.” Katsuki said. “Do you think going pro is easy? This shit’s got a higher rate of fucking failure than those girls who want to put on skimpy outfits for losers who drop a week’s paycheck to see them sing and dance on a stage. Being a Pro Hero is the hardest damn thing somebody can do, and you?”

He plastered a wide grin across his face like war paint, and leaned forward. “If you keep running your mouth talking shit about me… then I’ll be glad to kick some sense into you on my way to the top.”

Something about the way Katsuki stood, the way he looked around not for answers but for a way to make an answer, resonated with Akane. Ranma looked at things that way.

“Anything goes.” She said, more to herself than anyone else.

Ryoga paused in his advance. “Huh?”

Akane planted one hand on the ground and shoved herself up onto her hands and knees, leaving a bloody palmprint on the ground. She’d clenched her hands into fists so hard that her nails bit into her palms, and she hadn’t even noticed. She rose to her feet and the villain turned to put her in his peripheral vision. “I just remembered something my dad used to tell me a lot, when we first started training.”

The shakes only gradually left her legs as her strength returned. “No matter what you’re doing, no matter how trivial or indulgent it is, if you limit yourself then you’ll always fail against someone who doesn’t. I didn’t understand what that meant until now.”

“I don’t really want to hurt you. I don’t have any grudge against you, so just go fight somebody else. Don’t interfere in my revenge against Ranma.” Ryoga said without taking his eyes off his other opponent. The breeze made the edges of his worn travelling clothes flutter slightly.

But Akane stood her ground. “Ranma Saotome is my boyfriend. If you’ve got beef with him… then you’ve got a problem with me, too!”

“...Really?”

“You bet! And I’m not going to let you hurt anyone else.”

The way that joy lit up the wall of sadness and anger broadcast by Ryoga sent shivers down her spine as he turned to face her, his face lit up with a kind of shaky happiness that that solidified as more of his ghastly smile slid into view. “Well then. I guess I do have a reason to kill you after all. Losing someone you love is supposed to be like losing a part of yourself. So let’s see how Ranma likes it when that happens to him.”

“Don’t forget about me, you fucking moron!” Katsuki yelled, blasting his Quirk pointlessly into the air for attention. “I’m going to kick your ass.”

“Not if I kick it first!” Akane snapped.

Ryoga charged forward, this time directly at Akane. She counter-charged, and met him with her own attack.

It was like punching a brick wall, if the wall punched back. He twisted a bandana around her left wrist to pin her in place and laid into her with his off hand. Akane deflected what she could and blocked what she had to, anything to keep his heavy fists away from her side and head.

Katsuki closed the distance, but hesitated. “Fucking amature, stop blocking my shot!”

And then Akane found what she’d been looking for -the discarded grenade-shaped gauntlet.

She kicked it between Ryoga’s feet, grabbed the front of his shirt, and then threw herself to the ground, taking away both of their footing! When he tried to remain standing the round and nobbly thing fouled his footing.

“It’s called Anything Goes Martial Arts!” Akane yelled as they both hit the pavement.

Ryoga tried to stand back up, but now Akane was grappling him and she wasn’t interested in either regaining her feet or letting him find his.

Katsuki took the opportunity and laid in with his boots, kicking relentlessly whenever he got the opportunity. It was dirty. It was brutal. It was the martial arts equivalent of a back alley mugging. But when Ryoga stopped fighting back, and started focussing on protecting his head and ribs, Akane couldn’t have been prouder.

[hr]
Katsuki marched Ryoga back to the entrance with his hand clamped around his neck. One aggressive move, he’d said, and he’d blow the villain’s head off.

All the fight was gone from Ryoga. He’d just sighed and gone along with them, lost in the intense misery that welled out of him like a blanket.

What stuck out to Akane as they walked was what the two boys had said while they argued about what a Hero was. Being a Hero couldn’t be about being the strongest, or even strong. Ryoga was a better fighter than her, but he certainly wasn’t any kind of Hero. But all of the Pro Heroes Akane had seen on television, and on rare occasions in-person, were strong. That meant that Katsuki wasn’t entirely wrong. Being strong factored into making someone able to be a Pro Hero, because without strength you couldn’t do the things Heroes were supposed to do, but there was more to it.

Ryoga’s accusations had been so hard-hitting because of how they made a kind of sense. Akane’s own childhood understanding that Heroes were people who everyone liked… that also wasn’t entirely untrue. Could it be that Heroes were just people strong enough to attract attention by doing heroic things, and glamorous enough that people liked them?

...That couldn’t be right. It shouldn’t be right! Her father, Aizawa, All Might -she refused to accept that all of those people she knew were good at heart were just as shallow as she’d been in elementary school. There had to be some kind of deeper meaning, but Akane couldn’t figure it out.

She’d just think about that later, when she didn’t hurt so much. Even a perfectly blocked punch was still a punch you took, and Akane hadn’t perfectly blocked most of the hits Ryoga’d dished out. She was going to be a mess of bruises by the time she got to Recovery Girl.

They came over the rise just in time to see the villains flee before All Might, at least those that hadn’t been defeated already. There was a big hole in the roof. The central plaza was completely trashed, with gouges torn in the pavers and dirt sprayed across it. Bodies littered it, clustered near a limp black body -Professor Aizawa. Akane almost screamed in horror, but then he took a deep breath.

He wasn’t dead.

Everything was alright.

The hand-faced villain shouted a dire warning of revenge to come as he escaped into the teleporter, who vanished after him, and All Might’s smile pierced the darkness. Everything was alright.

Everything was going to be alright.

[hr]
Some time later there was a mass of police on the scene. An ambulance had already arrived to take away Aizawa, who’d been injured battling the villains, and All Might had gone with him and a few of the injured students, but several of the teaching staff were still present, among them Principal Nezu.

U.A.’s principal was a short bear-mouse looking animal with a Quirk that boosted his intelligence to superhuman levels. He had grey skin, and wore a black dress vest over a white shirt and pants combination that made him look very professional.

He’d acted almost casually as soon as U.A.’s wounded were taken away, but he kept glancing back at the door as though expecting someone to come through it.

...And before too long, someone did.

The discordant sound of a ukulele being plucked rang across the scene as a man strode in.. He was tall, bronzed from the sun, and wearing a short-sleeved dress shirt with large white roses printed on it. A necklace of fluffy pink flowers hung around his thick neck, and his topknot was decorated with plastic leaves, so that it looked like a miniature palm tree was growing out of the top of his head.

“Alooooha, keiki! The big kahuna’s on the scene!” He said, and threw his instrument aside to clasp his hand on Ryoga’s shoulder.

“...Please don’t touch me.”

“Hahahaha! You won’t be sayin’ that in a moment boy. You see, I’m here to bail you out!”

“I expected you to try something like this, Kuno.” Principal Nezu said calmly. “But I didn’t expect you to be so blatant. That young man is the police’s problem now, not someone you can just scoop up off the street.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, friend. You see, as principal of the second greatest Hero School in all of Japan I have a responsibility to see to the wellbeing of my students.”

Nezu’s nose twitched in irritation. He knew he was being maneuvered, but couldn’t see the angle yet. “That boy is not your student.”

“No, but he is a problem child. Fortunately last week I hired Japan’s foremost expert on delinquent rehabilitation, and now Furinkan High is the number one choice to refer… problem cases to.” Kuno’s smile was as bright as it was smug.

U.A.’s principal worked through the implications and waved him off with a chuckle. “Fine, fine. An excellent ploy, but don’t expect it to work twice.”

Kuno laughed as well. The two were the picture of two good friends, enjoying a funny situation. Then he hauled Ryoga upright and quickly marched the young man away.

As soon as he’s out of earshot, Principal Nezu went as tense as a wound spring, and he seethed with anger for several seconds before burning it away with a manic laugh. “HA!”

“Can he really get away with that?” Akane asked.

“As long as the hasn’t been recorded saying anything incriminating, yes.” Nezu sighed. “Kuno and his family are highly connected in both the Hero industry and the government. I’ve been expecting him to do something ever since the beginning of this school year, but I didn’t expect it to be this blatant. Oh well! Let’s get the rest of you students back to school to collect your things, and then you can take the rest of the day off. Go home! Goodness knows I’ll be at work far into the night, so let’s balance that out with some extra happiness.”

[hr]
A television showed the afternoon news in the Tendo home. A small man, wrinkled and shrunken with age, watched it while Soun and Genma held a frantic whispered conversation outside in the dojo. His name was Happosai.

His eyes narrowed as the news played the same video he’d just watched again. A still body that had crashed to Earth, skin inky black, his head sharklike, his teeth jagged, his brain exposed and still quivering. It’d been defeated by All Might, but no one on any of the news stations knew who it was.

Happosai knew that what it was mattered more.

“Nomu.” He cursed. “Well doesn’t that just ruin all my plans.”

 

[TPK]

“Wake up m’boy!” Happosai barged the guest bedroom with a sound like a cannon going off. Genma squealed in terror and covered his head with his hands, but the expected pain didn’t come. He peeked between his fingers, and saw the shriveled old man standing in the middle of the room, visibly confused.

“Is something wrong, master?” He asked, fearful of speaking up and gathering attention but also afraid of not knowing what was going on.

“Your son-”

“Ranma.”

“Ranma, yes. He sleeps in this room with you, correct?”

Genma nodded eagerly. “Oh yes. Of course he’s very lazy, so… Huh. He’s not here.”

He padded out the door and caught sight of his old friend and current landlord. “Soun, have you seen Ranma?”

“You didn’t notice? He and Akane left for school early today. They wanted to talk to a teacher about some boy named Ryoga; he’s supposed to be one of Ranma’s old friends. Do you recognize that name?”

“Not at all.” He turned back to the old man, and smiled shakily. “See there? He just left for school early. He’ll be back tonight.”

Happosai kicked the floor and scowled for a moment, but then shrugged and poked Genma in the belly with his pipe. “You knew that I’d graciously allowed the boy to get a good night’s sleep last night, and didn’t notice him getting up early. I think you’ve had it too soft in my absence, Genma.”

“...It's too early for heavy conversation. Wouldn’t you rather have some breakfast?”

“I already ate. And don’t look so relieved, Soun. I see how stiff your stance is! You’re going to be joining your friend in remedial training.”

Soun panicked, remembering his master’s normal training routines and realizing just how much damage they would do to his outstanding reputation, and Genma’s. He could weather a few blows, but the last thing he wanted was official attention being turned Genma’s way. Pro Heroes could be very persistent, once they found a trace of villainy.

He smiled shakily at the little old man. “Master, please be reasonable and consider the circumstances that we’re in. Everyone’s cell phone has a camera these days, and it would be terrible if I was unable to host you because I was being questioned about breaking and entering.”

Happosai grumbled, and the two men sighed in relief, but then he perked back up and rapped the floor with his pipe as he got up to leave the room. “Alright then, since the usual training methods won’t work I’ll have to improvise. Does anyone in this district own a twenty-foot alligator? I have a training routine that involves one of those, so your first task is to find me one and bring it back here.”

Genma chuckled as soon as Happosai was out of sight, and was about to congratulate Soun on getting them out of training when he saw the sickly shade of green spreading across his face. “What? Surely nobody in Nerima owns an alligator. Surely… Soun?”

“The Kuno girl does. It got out last spring and destroyed a few shops.”

“...Really?”

“She named it Mister Turtle.”

-----

The news Akane had gotten that day at school was shocking.

“I really can’t believe it. It’s only been a day after a bunch of villains attacked, but we just learned that the U.A. Sports Festival is going ahead as planned, and that it’ll be in just two weeks! It doesn’t feel right, like they shouldn’t just be able to sweep it under the rug and move onto the next big thing.” Akane tried not to shudder at the memory of her homeroom teacher, Professor Aizawa, standing in front of the class with both of his arms in plaster cast slings.

It was impossible not to view him with a veneer of hero worship, in light of his determination to sacrifice himself rather than let any of his students come to harm, and yet she still felt like he’d been a little too blase.

“And you’re sure that that Ryoga guy is actually your friend? He seemed pretty sure that he wanted to kill you.” She asked the boy walking home from school beside her.

Ranma nodded. “We used to fight all the time over who got the last packaged bread from the lunch lady at school. Curry bread, banana bread, apple bread, beef bread- we fought over all of them, and I always won.”

“So you stole his lunch?”

“We fought over it. It was fair! If he’d asked then I would’ve shared, anyway.” Ranma grumbled, not in the least guilty.

Akane rolled her eyes. “Boys.”

Ranma dashed ahead of her and turned around, walking backwards so that they could talk seriously face to face. “About the sports festival…”

“Yeah?”

“You’d better not think I’m going to go easy on you.” He warned. “And I don’t want you to go easy on me either.”

“I’ll show you what I’ve got, all right.” Akane said with a grin, already looking forward to seeing the payoff for her work in the Hero Course, while Ranma’d been stuck in General Studies. The attack on the U.S.J. had rattled her, especially Ryoga’s actions and attitude, but she still itched to prove herself and the sports festival was just what she needed to keep her head on straight.

Years of training, anticipation, and lack of challenge had fostered an eagerness that her recent struggles had only fanned into burning anticipation. A quick glance at Ranma showed a soft glow around him of the same emotion.

The two of them walked through the kitchen and into the living room of the Tendo home, where their fathers sat with a shriveled-up old man who’d barely reach their waists, puffing on a long metal pipe. Their conversation died as the two youths walked in, and they turned to face them.

“So you must be Ranma.” The old man said. “I hear you had a run-in with those cursed springs in China. How are the Amazons doing?”

“How did you know about them?” Ranma asked nervously while Akane mouthed ‘amazons’ in confusion.

“The name’s Happosai, founder of Anything Goes Martial Arts. I’m your father’s master.” The old man explained. “And I’ll be schooling you in a few important lessons, and maybe even some secret techniques.”

Normally he wouldn’t bother trying to bribe someone he could browbeat, but Genma’d warned him that his son had started to pick up a few dangerous tendencies at U.A., like critical thinking, so he opened up with a full salvo aimed directly at Ranma’s greatest weakness- learning new martial arts techniques.

“When can we start?” Akane asked eagerly.

“We?” Happosai asked. “I didn’t say I was going to teach you anything. I’m not taking on two students here.”

“But why not?” Akane protested, feeling like the rug had been pulled out from under her.

“Ranma’s better than you are. Just by looking I can tell that he’d need about three seconds to beat you.”

The flippant ease he said that with left her gaping, and caused a pulsing and raw anger to swell in her temple. “You…” She ground out. “I… Don’t look down on me! I’m-”

“Half-trained. It’s not your fault, girl. Your father just didn’t have the guts to train you properly, so you’re a few years behind. You might be worth my personal instruction in, oh… three years or so?”

She wanted to leap at him, to hit him, to prove him wrong, but he was just so small and so old that she couldn’t bring herself to do it. But then she saw it, the gleam in his placid aura that spoke of amusement. She grabbed the low table and was just about to rip it up and show that smug little gnome exactly what she was capable of when Ranma spoke up, and cut her rage off at the knees.

Ranma said, “No.”

Genma looked at his son as if he’d just turned blue and died, gape-mouthed and flummoxed. “The master’s training is tough, but he’s the best martial artist there is! You can’t just turn him down. His temper is legendary. I have scars Ranma, scars over not just my body but my memory.”

“Is that true?” Akane whispered to her father, who was also quaking with fear, but it was the old man who answered.

“I can remember when almost nobody had Quirks. Live to be as old as I am and you pick up a few tricks about what you like doing.” He said. “I have a wealth of experience that you-”

“Can it old man.” Ranma snapped. “If you want to train me, then you have to train Akane too.”

“Have to? Boyo, I don’t have to do anything!” Happosai laughed.

“And I don’t have to be trained by you!” Ranma snapped back, souring the old man’s mirth.

“I’m trying to help you, boy. Don’t spit on my kindness.”

“Who says that I want your help? Maybe I want to do this on my own, with the teachers I earned by getting into U.A., instead of because my pop had a good teacher.”

Happosai stared long and hard up at Ranma and worked his mouth left and right, chewing over the situation. He looked at Akane, who put on a determined expression, then back at Ranma, and finally nodded. “Fine, but don’t blame me if she gives up halfway through.”

“She won’t.” Ranma said.

Akane nodded eagerly, and grinned. “You know what this mean, Ranma? I’m going to place higher than you do in the sports festival after all.”

Her boyfriend rolled his eyes, and changed the subject. “So what’s first- Quirk training? A new martial art style?”

Happosai hopped to his feet. “I’ll start with the basics, I suppose. If your fathers are the ones who trained you, then god knows you’ll need those shored up. We’ll begin with some training that uses the peculiarities of my Quirk.

“The power of my Two Hand Transfer is immense, especially in this modern age. Behold!” Happosai held both hands palm-forward. He twisted his wrists and produced a pair of playing cards. His right hand held the queen of hearts, and his left held a blank card with nothing on it. Then the blank card was suddenly the queen of hards, and the card in his right hand was blank!

“You can teleport the things you touch?” Ranma sounded impressed.

“No, you foolish boy! Weren’t you paying attention?”

Akane nodded. “Look a the card in his left hand. It’s had a rip in the corner the whole time.”

And so it had, Ranma saw. “But then what did you do?”

“I name things like they are. I transferred the ink printed on the surface of the card in my right hand to the card in my left, but it’s not limited to pictures.” Then the old man produced a newspaper with his right hand, and soon after the card had been printed over with the day’s headlines and the newspaper was blank.

“...Or ink.” He held up a rubber duck, and the card squeaked when he squeezed it. He squeezed the duck, and it was silent.

“...Or cards.” He swapped the squeaky newsprint queen of hearts into his right hand, and cycled the blank card, newspaper, and rubber duck through his left, transferring their features back into them one by one until they were whole and he was left with a blank card.

Akane whistled low and long, and Ranma followed suit. “That’s a really powerful Quirk.” She said.

Happosai blushed and scuffed his foot against the floor. “Aw -Now you’re flattering me, and flattery gets you everywhere, but there’s one more thing my Quirk does that I haven’t shown you, and it’s the important part. Lean in close, you two. I don’t like showing this part off in front of a crowd.”

“Master…” Soun said, face pale with trepidation, but then Genma slapped his palm over his mouth and pulled him back.

Akane leaned in, as did Ranma beside her, and before she could blink the old man pressed his palm to her and his foreheads -one, two! “Done!” He chirped.

They fell backwards and landed hard on the floor, shocked and confused. Ranma frowned, feeling an emptiness in his belly that hadn’t been there before. It was like the sensation of a foot that’d fallen asleep, but he couldn’t pin down exactly what was numb.

Akane screamed. “I’m blind!”

Happosai flicked his pipe up toward her face, and the girl blocked it. “You’re not blind.” He said. “I just transferred both of your Quirks into this marble, here.”

She stared at the two marbles he held in his hand. Both moved and twitched slightly in the grip of his left hand.

“Quirks are new things.” Happosai said, rolling the marbles around in circles. “And most people think that skill comes from having a powerful Quirk, instead of the other way around. Any Quirk can be weak, if its wielder has a weak body, an unsure mind, and doesn’t train to gain the skill to do what they want. Strength comes from dedication, hardship, and intense dedication, and the two of you will need strength in the near future.

”Consider this your first lesson of Anything Goes Martial Arts from the man who invented it. Life is what you make of it, and not what’s handed to you. Whether you achieve your dreams or not doesn’t come from what Quirk you were born with, but how motivated you are!”

“Yeah!” Ranma said, feeling the motivation flowing from the old man.

“...Which is why I’m going to be chasing you around a construction site with a twenty-foot long alligator, for motivation.”

Akane stared at him, and found her eyes sliding off as if he was just a part of the background. She looked at Ranma and he was pale to her sight, leached of any color like a man drained of blood. He looked less real to her than he had just moments ago, like he was just a cardboard cutout of a person.

There was no emotion in him as he turned his lip up and bared his teeth. “This is weird, but… bring it on, because I can handle it. How ‘bout you, Akane?”

Right. That was Ranma. He was smiling. “Y-yeah. I can take it.”

-----

“Thanks for sticking up for me. I tried to convince him on my own but I just got so mad, and he was enjoying messing with me instead of taking me at all seriously. I could see it.” Akane muttered as the two of them limped back home later that evening, covered in dirt, wearing clothes torn by sharp rebar, and feeling the ache of bruises from moving too slowly, but not at all eaten by the alligator the martial arts master had rustled up.

It wasn’t from lack of trying on its part.

“Yeah, well. I don’t have any money to get you any jewelry or treats like the guys in class say girls like guys to get them when they’re dating.”

“I don’t think either of us can afford to do more than look at jewelry. Anybody who gives jewels as gifts at our age probably has the wrong priorities, too.” Akane said resignedly. “Still, I appreciate the thought, and the gift, even if my getting training from my own style’s founder shouldn’t take blackmail to get.”

“Once I get into the hero course at U.A. I’ll get training from Pro Heroes, so I wouldn’t have missed much if he’d stuck to his guns. Besides, you need the help more than I do.”

“...Do you even know what tact is?” Akane asked, aghast.

Ranma shook his head. “Nah, but it sounds pretty useless.”

His girlfriend leaned into him and pressed her forehead into his chest. “Shameless.” She muttered. “Stop being so proud of yourself.”

When he opened his mouth to speak she leaned up on her toes, and she pressed her lips to his in a light kiss. Then she backed away, barely able to contain her giggles at the stupidly surprised look on his face, and the fizzy confusion in his aura.

“Bluh?” Ranma sputtered, and Akane lost it. She threw her hands over her face and ran into her room, howling with laughter and filled with the best kind of happiness.

 

[TPK]

Learning under Happosai wasn’t all about practical skills. He often lectured about heroism and the various forms it had taken throughout his long life at the same time, if a rambling story could be called a lecture. Despite the lackluster teaching skill her tutor had, Akane was fascinated by the material.

The old man was a living relic, and significant moments from history were engraved on his brain, though sometimes he got the names mixed up. He once spent an hour calling the most famous villain in history Dumas, because he couldn’t remember the name of the man who plunged Japan into a dark age of lawless villainy, and plunged society into chronic fear.

“It’s his Quirk that made him powerful, not his motivation -really he was extremely petty, more than anything else. He could take and give other Quirks away with a touch, tearing them out and shoving them in with all the grace of a car bomb.” He looked offended at the idea, as though All for One’s methods were a personal insult, but then he glanced sidelong at Ranma and Akane. “But he’s not dead yet.”

The bulk of their time outside of class, though, was spent on martial arts practicals, and both teens soaked up everything Happosai demonstrated over those two short weeks. Akane’s homework grades slipped, but her homeroom teacher didn’t care. He understood what was coming, and knew that everyone in class 1A was feeling the drive to prepare.

Watching Happosai spar with Ranma was like watching All Might attack a blind cripple. The old man never moved any faster than Ranma, but somehow the boy was the one on the mat at the end of the ground every time. A flick of the wrist, a half-step, a pressure point here or there- he used a seemingly endless variety of techniques to maintain complete control of the spar. When it was Akane’s first turn to spar he’d treated her more gently, which only pissed her off, but to Happosai’s credit he’d agreed to come at her with the same level of skill he had Ranma.

He’d humiliated her.

He deconstructed her form in a handful of minutes and then spent the better part of two hours painfully demonstrating each and every flaw with harsh jabs of his long pipe. He tore Akane to shreds, and only when she collapsed in a mass of bruises and broken pride did he begin to rebuild her skill from the ground up, without any of the fundamental flaws he claimed came from her father’s shoddy instruction.

The flourishes, the extra motions of playing to an imaginary crowd, were the first problem removed and the first thing Happosai worked to teach her after rebuilding her foundation.

“You aren’t your Quirk, but it is part of you. It’s part of your martial art, and every move you make in a fight needs to breathe that truth, or else you won’t live up to your potential.” Happosai had said at the end of his crash course. “Taking everything that works for who you are and using it is the point of Anything Goes Martial Arts, so don’t worry about not practising the style as Soun taught it to you.”

Happosai reached out and touched her shoulder gently. “Do you understand?”

Eyes firm with resolve, Akane nodded. “I do.”

“Great! Now you’re going to need to run down to the tobacco store on the South side of Nerima to pick up my tobacco order. You’ve got half an hour and you need to do it without using your Quirk, so get running!”

Akane froze, and realized as the old man bounced cackling away that he’d just taken her Quirk to make his training harder. Again.

She sprinted out the door, and when she came back clutching a pouch of tobacco leaf half an hour later, she’d thought of five ways how she could have used her Quirk to make the hard task sooo much easier.

[hr]
Akane paused on the street as the ambient emotional light flickered. The overall aura of contentment and petty frustration that soaked the area was split by the wake of someone emanating satisfaction. It was a subtle difference in color between that and general all-around feeling fine with your life, but Akane had a decade of practice, and that tint was the same as a student who’d just solved a difficult problem on a test.

The trail faded quickly and it wasn’t very strong to start with, so she couldn’t see who it was that caused the sudden shift in color on the other side of the street, or where they’d gone.

“An invisible sprinter?” She guessed, but then shrugged. People running around undetectably in the open weren’t her problem. It was a public street.

...Unless they were like Tooru Hagakure, her invisible classmate whose clothes decidedly weren’t. Akane narrowed her eyes and tried to figure out how likely that was, but was interrupted when black rose petals blew down the street in a sudden gust.

The young woman that made her appearance then was the kind that made Akane jealous. She had porcelain-pale skin and a long yet feminine figure, and wore a green leotard. Her black hair hung down in a sideways ponytail. Except the familiar pang of concern didn’t trouble Akane. She compared the stranger’s thighs and waist on reflex (less thick, less bulky than her own) and yet somehow those facts didn’t bother her.

“It is I-” The stranger said as the flower petals fell to the ground around her.

“And you are?” Akane tilted her head.

The girl frowned. “I’m not familiar to you, not even a little?”

“I can’t say that I recognize you, no.” Akane said.

“I suppose that can be excused. I did not pick my school to be coddled, after all, and we are not in the same class. Suffice it to say that all of Japan will one day speak in awe of the Black Rose, but as we are future comrades you may refer to me casually as Kodachi Kuno of U.A.’s class 1H instead. Oh-hohohoho!” She declared with an elegant laugh.

“I’m Akane Tendo.” Akane said. “Known professionally as Akane Tendo, from class 1A. It’s nice to meet you.”

Kodachi furrowed her brow in consternation, and placed one hand on her chin as she began to mutter. “Using your name as a hero monicker? What a modern decision. I don’t know if I like it, or not. I could be Kodachi but spelled with different symbols, indicative of transformation, but a pun is a base form of humor. Perhaps I could be KUNO? I need to consider this.”

Class H was where U.A. put its inventors and equipment-makers in training, so maybe Kodachi was one of those absent-minded inventor types? That’d make her rudeness excusable, or at least a little bit so.

She should interrupt with a change of subject. That would be a polite way to move the conversation forward from its stalled position. “Did you lose the rest of your clothes?”

Kodachi blinked as she came out of her considerations. “No. My leotard provides the least limiting form of clothing as is proper for a daughter of the Kuno family. It allows me nearly my full range of motion; surely that is more important than false modesty.”

Akane would have objected, but leaving aside the oddness about wearing her hero costume out and about, she remembered that some of her classmates exposed more of their skin for much the same reason -even one of her teachers did! “I suppose I can’t fault you for that. It would be practical to maybe remove some of the cloth on the joints of my costume.”

“Also, it is no crime to flaunt a superior body over those lowlies who fail to take care of themselves. Much like art, my beauty shall motivate as much as my work!” Kodachi nodded in satisfaction.

“...Never mind.”

Kodachi sighed. “I won’t. The opinions of my lessers mean nothing to me.”

The girl’s ego was almost as big as Ranma’s!

“As to my purpose here, which I was distracted from, it is because of the upcoming Sports Festival.”

“That’s really soon.” Akane said.

Kodachi nodded. “Indeed, which is why you would do well to listen closely. It is a common misconception that students in the Support Track do not have much hope of high performance in the yearly Sports Festival. We spend almost no time in class learning how to use our Quirks offensively, or ingraining combat reflexes into ourselves. I am, of course, far above my peers in those fields, but the primary use to which we put the event is to showcase our support gadgets. We do this by using them ourselves and by lending them out to promising students in the Heroics or General Education courses, and we stake our professional pride in how well the recipients of our gifts perform.”

Akane got it. “And you want me to use something you made?”

“Exactly!” Kodachi said with a bright smile.

“I don’t see anything that could be it.” Akane admitted. “Did you leave it nearby?” Maybe it was a gi that would harden when struck, or a sword that only cut clothes while leaving the person wearing them intact!

In response, Kodachi held out her hand and Akane was treated to an unnerving sight. “Sasuke? A fresh vial.” An emotional aura without a person inside of it appeared and handed the girl a clear glass vial with a wide triangular base.

“The invisible streaker!” She gasped, and Kodachi sighed.

“ A young woman of my standing would never allow a man to be so bold. Sasuke is merely a servant of the Kuno family who inherited both his father and his mother’s Quirks. He creates a cloak of invisibility around himself as well as a projecting a slipstream that he rides from place to place. Why does everyone assume that he is naked?”

Akane shuffled. “Well, there is Tooru. She’s in my class, and she’s invisible.”

“Ah yes, the invisible streaker.” Kodachi said firmly.

She wears clothes, Akane wanted to protest, but didn’t. She wasn’t entirely sure about Tooru herself, any more.

The Support student swished the vial full of water, and then stuck her finger inside. The water billowed, and turned a bright red color. “My Quirk, Golden Elixir, allows me to alter the molecular structure of any liquid that comes in contact with my skin. I usually use it to produce medicinal pills, stimulants, and the like.”

“Wow- that’s impressive.” Akane said appreciatively, but something tickled the back of her mind in a way that she didn’t like. “Wait a second. You don’t want me to use a stimulant to do better in the festival, do you?”

“Of course I do,” Kodachi said cheerily. “Years of experimentation has led me to develop several medicinal formulas that can unlock some of the human body’s safety limiters. To the average person that would be extremely dangerous, but to a martial artist with an expert understanding of her own body’s limits…”

“I could recognize the warning signs that meant I was really at the edge of my rope, when I reached it.” She breathed, and when Kodachi revealed a slim case she accepted it with numb hands. It was the size of her thumb, and had three plastic lids labeled with neat typeset words. The pills inside were bright and round, like hard candies.

Suddenly she looked back up at the other girl. “I don’t know about this.”

“It’s allowed. I even asked my homeroom teacher, Power Loader. Feel free to check, but that formula has been tested and approved to be given to other students. It’s perfectly safe, as long as the instructions are followed.”

Akane barely even noticed when Kodachi vanished in another swirl of rose petals, a trick she recognized as her servant pulling her into his invisibility. She was lost in deliberation.

It wouldn’t be cheating, she knew, not in U.A.’s eyes. She’d check with Power Loader after school tomorrow, but she already knew that he’d back up Kodachi on that count. It just sounded right. U.A. didn’t shy away from letting its students use equipment to gain any advantages they could get their hands on. It was competitive that way, but.

But.

Akane had another goal for the Sports Festival, a goal shared by she and Ranma both. Her boyfriend had struggled so hard, pushed so far, and so had she. They weren’t the same people they were when they first met, even though that was so recently!

Could she really rob him of a fair competition by stealing an advantage she hadn’t worked for? That idea raced around and around. Did she refuse to use the pills for Ranma, or use them for herself and for U.A.? She couldn’t ask him, of course. What if he got mad that she’d even considered using them?

What if he asked her not to take the pills, but she decided to use them anyway? They’d been getting along so well recently, struggling under the crazy old master and bonding in their shared frustration and ache.

But.

Everyone in Japan would be watching.

Ranma’d forgive her eventually, just like she tried not to hold his verbal clumsiness against him, right? There were other students with awe-inspiring Quirks in her year at U.A., and if these pills could push her far enough to beat them, then her future possibilities would soar higher than she could imagine.

But. But. But.

She’d sleep on it.

[hr]
The next day, Akane’s bedroom door opened with a soft thump, and then an even quieter click. She locked it before she went to school, but it was a simple and old door. Nabiki had known that the latch would pop free if she pushed on the handle and lifted for years, so it yielded to her with the ease of long practice.

Nabiki Tendo was not supposed to be in her sister’s room, but this wasn’t the first time she’d slipped inside while Akane was out. Akane had a good sense for fashion, if a modest sense of it. She’d been borrowing them for as long as Akane’d been picking out her own clothes, and the one year gap had always meant that shirts she considered chaste and cute stretched nicely when Nabiki wore them.

She closed the door behind her without a sound; it wouldn’t do to bother Kasumi. Her father and Genma could be fooled with an innocent look and the assertion that Akane didn’t mind her borrowing things, but her older sister couldn’t. Unlike Akane, who’d grumble but never raise a hand to a Quirkless girl, Kasumi had less violent ways of making her displeasure known.

Fortunately the woman was off with her older boyfriend, but it paid to be careful. That thought brought a frown to the sneak, though she’d been blessed with a face that never looked anything less than cute, even while crying, so it looked like more of a pout. She didn’t know how her prim and proper older sister had snagged a man riding such a promising career, and it rubbed at her nerves like sandpaper.

But she could try to figure out what to do about that topic later, when she wasn’t in Akane’s room. Furinken let out at the same time U.A. did, and the management track she was in only required an extra half hour of work after that before she could head home. Since Furinken was local, and U.A. wasn’t, she’d have a quarter of an hour before Akane arrived home.

She rummaged through Akane's things, taking care to leave each item exactly as it had been before she touched it. She glanced through the closet and draped a cute shirt Akane'd worn twice over her arm, and then found something unusual. It was a small plastic case, about the size of a disposable cigarette lighter, labeled with neat lettering. “Take the first for a ten percent boost to your physical capabilities for four hours. Take the second for an additional ten percent boost. Take the third for an additional twenty percent boost. Do not take pills out of order. Do not mix with alcohol. Product of the Black Rose.” She read.

Those were powerful effects. A drug like that… could only be made with the help of a Quirk. At first Nabiki thought to leave the pill case on the table downstairs, a spiteful urge to make her father punish Akane, his favorite. But no.

No.

Nabiki wouldn’t do that to Akane, not her own sister. After all, she lived in the room next door, and Akane knew that she often broke into her room to ‘borrow’ things. She’d be blamed, and Akane had changed recently. It was best not to push her luck.

As she looked at the case, though, she realized that the pills really did look like hard candies. She pulled a package of them out of her pocket -she loved sweets and kept a few on her for snacks- and compared them more thoroughly.

...They matched almost perfectly. The labels were written on the case’s compartments themselves, and the little lids just snapped open and closed. She could replace the performance enhancers and nobody would be able to tell the difference until they ate one, and nothing happened.

It was a tantalizing thought.

Nabiki reasoned that Akane had probably bought them off of a classmate in the support division at U.A., so that she’d have an edge during the Sports Festival tomorrow. They’d make an even bigger profit if sold at the last minute, like sports tickets hawked outside a sold-out stadium, and since she didn’t intend to pay for them in the first place, well. That would only add more zeros to the number.

But she hesitated. Borrowing clothes was one thing, as was her habit of amature photography with models who were using method acting to portray the enhanced realism caused by not knowing there was a camera following… fine. So she took creep shots and sold them for money to buy snacks and cute things. When put that way, what was stealing her younger sister’s performance enhancing drugs before the competition that would be watched on every television set in Japan?

But Nabiki hesitated. Pictures didn’t hurt anybody. Akane’s shirts not quite fitting right when she got them back was just an inconvenience. Replacing those pills was a bigger step than just taking the whole package, or exposing Akane to their father. It was pulling the chair out from under her while she sat down with the country’s attention on her. Internships were won and lost at the Sports Festival, and big name Hero Agencies made their preliminary evaluations there as well.

But as Nabiki froze with indecision, a lone thought slinked into the forefront of her mind. Wouldn’t it feel good to bring the family’s golden child down a notch, to make everyone look at her as if she were the incapable one? Wouldn’t that be a kind of justice, for a Quirkless girl to bring down someone whose Quirk had let them get into the most prestigious and respected school in the country, and to do so in a way that would never let the blame fall on her?

The door opened downstairs as Akane announced her entrance, and Nabiki made her decision.