Thorny Path of a Pro-Hero

Already in the gym, a technical question piqued my interest:

"Can you fight properly without a special costume? Do you have it with you?"

"Ha, just as I expected from my opponent!" exclaimed the future H̶o̶k̶a̶g̶e̶ heroine, playfully wagging her finger at me. "Yes, you're right; I have a special costume. I got it just a couple of months ago. But I won't even need it!"

The blonde, still in her skirt and blouse, stomped to the opposite end of the gym, into the shadow beside a stack of sports equipment and mats, and with a smile, clasped her hands behind her back, as if to say, "Come at me, I'm the queen."

"Bandages, gloves, kimono?" I raised an eyebrow unintentionally.

I turned and moved to the other end, near the window. There were about ten meters between us, but from this point, the light of the setting sun slightly blinded me, so I couldn't see her very well. Smart.

I extended my hand to block the window's light, studying the girl more closely.

"Nope. Well, go on, attack! Or are you scared?" Setsuna smiled carelessly.

However, I wasn’t deceived, having stopped underestimating any opponent after Mashirao. My eyes, trained through hundreds of "quirky" sparrings, noted the girl's focused gaze, the tension in her shoulders with her hands held behind her back, and even the fact that her hands weren't even there anymore, judging by her posture.

She wants to beat me with trickery, huh? Well, okay.

No, seriously, let's see what I can do if I brazenly walk into someone else's trap. If a schoolgirl can beat me, then what chance do I have against All for One?

Shrugging, I moved forward.

At first, walking, then, about five meters away, I sped up... well, just a bit. Just in case she couldn't close the trap in time.

And... I didn't make it.

Setsuna stood there, as if preparing to attack, but surprise-surprise, it was a trap. About a meter and a half away from her, someone grabbed me by my clothes—it felt like at least two people—from behind, where I couldn't see and couldn't elbow into the diaphragm to break free from the hold, and... lifted me into the air.

In the end, I hung by the wall like a sad cat.

Setsuna started celebrating, jumping around and generally flaunting her intellectual and combat superiority.

Her plan was simple. Simple, risky, but quite effective—choosing the battle conditions herself while I couldn't see her, setting up an "ambush" using hands that had circled around me from behind, then attacking—grabbing my clothes, shoulders, underarms, picking me up with her elbows, and lifting me into the air, where I hung helplessly. Smartly keeping me at a distance from the wall and ceiling so I couldn't push off.

After all, what difference does it make how good I am in close combat if I'm hanging in the air and can't reach the girl?

And, in principle, this plan was indeed not bad, which I demonstrated by clapping my hands.

Clapping my hands.

You got it; I'm good at hiding my quirk.

However... well, we're still talking about me here.

I've been preparing to smash the face of the strongest being in this world since I was four.

***

Meanwhile, Setsuna Tokage.

Setsuna was on top!

Setsuna had calculated everything!

And she succeeded! It was a brilliant plan! And how elegantly she pulled it off, how beautifully she won, huh? Did you see that? And yes, she made an impression on that cool boy, and now she's dominating the...

Her neat train of thought, dedicated to well-deserved self-admiration, was interrupted by a clap and a gust of wind, and... and... how did this happen...

Mouth agape, she watched as the other recommended student for U.A. crushed her confidence in victory... and at the same time, her self-esteem.

The guy sharply thrust his hands forward. The ensuing push threw him back—along with Setsuna's hands, which had clung to him with all their might in an attempt to keep him away from the surface. It didn't help. Twisting his entire body abruptly, the guy did a flip in the air, slamming his feet against the walls and powerfully pushing himself downward, propelling himself toward the floor like a rocket.

He easily brushed off the hands still clinging to him, casually swatting them away, and parried a few following blows effortlessly.

He landed softly on the ground without a sound, rolling smoothly.

No, he looked like a predator, some kind of tiger or panther she watched on TV as a child when there were no superhero shows. Efficient, precise movements, lightness, almost weightlessness...

"Pervim delom, pervim delom samolety, ny a devushki, a devushki potom," the boy muttered distractedly in a language unfamiliar to her, casually deflecting the last desperate attack and approaching Setsuna as if nothing had happened.

At that moment, he exuded such a threat that the girl involuntarily recoiled and, unable to maintain her balance due to the incomplete set of arms and legs, fell on her butt. Not at all gracefully.

And in that same moment, she was struck by the realization of just HOW vast the gap was between their levels. This guy... this monster... he was just playing with her. Letting her show what she could do. Why not? Of course, he didn't interfere with her! And she had even wondered why he was giving her so much time to prepare... what could she possibly do to him...

Setsuna felt goosebumps all over her body.

"Not a bad plan, Tokage-san," the polite monster said casually, extending a hand to her.

The girl, lost, accepted his help and stood up...

Then Tokage irritably pushed back her disheveled hair and shook her head. Why was she so foolish today?! So flustered that she even forgot about her quirk's levitation.

Adjusting her skirt and rubbing her backside, Setsuna began to frantically search for a way to restore her self-esteem.

Finally, her gaze fell on the girl sitting calmly on the bench, chewing gum, Yui-something-or-other-san. Either a student or the monster's cheering squad.

As far as the gyaru… although, hey, Setsuna wasn't really a gyaru; she just liked the style, and it suited her, all her friends said so, yes, yes!

As far as she knew, unlike the monster himself, this brunette with a stylish bob hadn't shown anything extraordinary.

Well, she can shrink things; she can enlarge things, big deal...

“Well, I’ll easily beat her,” concluded Setsuna Tokage confidently.

***

Niren, same place.

Yui defeated Tokage almost faster than I did.

But it was kind of expected. I rather knew what I was up against, so I didn't prepare, while Kodai, sitting on the bench, had time to assess the potential opponent's abilities and come up with some decisions.

And, to a large extent, the swift victory was due to one girl calculating the impulsive actions of the other.

After all, Setsuna was the one who initiated the attack—quickly, with gusto!

Apparently, trying to redeem herself in our eyes, or maybe just trying to burn out her own frustration with hot iron.

Eight controlled "projectiles" flew at Yui at a pretty decent speed—though they were completely useless in terms of target selection and execution.

And Yui stood there, utterly unperturbed, blowing a bubble with her pink gum.

I nodded approvingly, grinning.

When Setsuna's strikes were about to hit, Yui stepped back and suddenly enlarged the bubble to about one and a half meters in diameter.

And—ta-da!—Tokage, not having time to stop, got "stuck" in the problem, immediately losing half her weapons.

As we already know, Yui's quirk doesn't remove the physical or chemical properties of objects; it merely increases their density and durability. The "stickiness" of the pink, almost opaque bubble remained exactly the same, if not increased, while its elasticity and density reached such levels that Setsuna's "puzzles" were simply trapped, like flies in a web.

A pink, strawberry-scented web.

...actually, to explain the mechanism of Yui's quirk (and save my sanity at the same time) and also assess its prospects, we took several trips to our city's science center over the last year, which focuses on researching promising quirks. A couple of scientists and their lab assistants found the time to do some "extra-curricular" work with us after several months of correspondence.

And first of all, hallelujah!

My worldview stopped cracking because Yui doesn't enlarge or shrink atoms, molecules, quarks, or anything else. A microtome, several microscopes, and a few specialists confirmed this. No, what her quirk does is, like… "infuses" the intermolecular space, not occupied by ionic or hydrogen bonds, with some stable "dense" energy, which allows the surface of an object to "expand" without losing its properties. Lots and lots of quotation marks!

In short, it won't explode. Whew.

However, it's still not advisable to ingest any liquid or organic matter she enlarges. Although the substances are absolutely stable, and the molecules are ordinary and therefore harmless, the density of the matter still increases, even if not by a factor of ten, and this could negatively affect digestion. In short, the scientists advised against drinking "Yui-ised" water or eating such food, and I was inclined to agree with them.

But there's no need to worry about inhaling enlarged gas molecules, which I was afraid of. Her quirk practically doesn't affect gases at all, and moreover, enlarged volumes of solid matter or liquid almost stop evaporating.

The reduction process turned out to be much more complicated, which, to be honest, I still didn't understand. The gist is that the space between the molecules somehow "folds" thanks to some kind of energy layer, and the molecules and atoms are packed very tightly, without losing properties and even gaining more stability than usual.

It's somewhat similar to stasis states in sci-fi, as the scientists suggested that products in such a form would spoil more slowly, and fragile things would become stronger, paradoxically.

Essentially, Yui's size manipulation is two similar but different quirks with different mechanisms of influence and divergence in some details.

Neither of them worked instantly; for example, Yui could shrink a one-meter-high metal barrel to the size of a mobile phone in about three seconds. Enlargement occurred a bit faster. However, to shrink an object, Yui had to maintain tactile contact; for enlargement, she didn't need to—just touching the target at the moment of activation was enough, and the effect would persist until Yui stopped "supplying energy" in passive mode or consciously canceled the action.

This property allowed us to develop techniques based on throwing various rubber balls with liquid, chewing gums, and so on.

However, the cancellation of the quirk's effect could be instantaneous—a kind of cheat code from cartoons where an anvil drops on an opponent's head.

Moreover, both quirks had something like an "emergency brake" or "foolproof" feature—Yui couldn't enlarge an object beyond a certain limit, around thirty to forty times, and she couldn't shrink an object more than fifty times. Furthermore, a significantly sized object, like a building, would be affected by the quirk much less than, say, a wrench or a trash can. The more complex the object, the harder it is to change its size. This is supposedly related to the mystical energy, which would require much more in the case of "infusing" a building than a wrench.

At least, that's how it was explained to us, and this particular thesis seemed logical to me.

And speaking of safety devices: it turned out that it's quite dangerous for Yui to be distracted during the activation of her quirk. There's a small, but existing, chance that she might accidentally enlarge or shrink something she didn't intend to. The likelihood of this mishap increases proportionally with fatigue. Yui was told to get plenty of rest and not to overexert herself.

And in the same category of things to avoid were Yui's attempts to "push" beyond the boundary where objects refuse to enlarge or shrink. Predictably, in the ultimate experiment to increase a tennis ball to the size of a balloon, she suddenly began to tire very quickly and almost lost consciousness within a couple of seconds.

However, we all agreed that the experience was immensely useful—knowing one's limits is necessary.

Whatever the case, the people in lab coats, excited by the prospects, warned us that complex electronics could break from shrinking. And they could also fail from intense enlargement, as the laws of quantum mechanics and material strength have not been canceled.

Fortunately, a simple moped or a sports bike without any electronic gadgets or futuristic guns should easily withstand both, so no big deal.

Yui might even be able to use these possible electronic failures in her superhero career. For destroying detonators, for example... since, theoretically, the explosive power of a reduced bomb would hardly change… though the bomb's weight during the explosion would be much less, hmm…

…I blinked and looked again at the strawberry gum bubble around which the puzzle pieces of the mosaic girl flailed helplessly. A cool move, overall.

My personal opinion is that any hero whose quirk involves interaction with surrounding objects should always have those objects, i.e., weapons, on hand. Many of us are weapons ourselves… me, for example. I mean, I'm from this reality. Or Setsuna.

But Yui, for example, or many of my future classmates should have weapons on hand. Always. Every minute. "Constant readiness!", so to speak.

That's why the ever-ready and prepared Yui retreated from the bubble, pulled a regular round pencil from her pocket, enlarged it to resemble a short staff, and, calmly parrying the blows raining down on her, began to approach Setsuna in an arc, who was angrily shouting about underhanded tricks. The contrast was striking.

In any case, the "fight" predictably ended in less than a couple of minutes—at the moment when Kodai reached her opponent and threw something on her that she had pulled from another pocket. That "something" turned out to be a volleyball net, which Yui had shrunk and stashed away while we were fighting, and then enlarged again.

And now, she just rolled Setsuna up in it, like in that Soviet comedy where some guy named Shurik rolled up an angry man in a carpet.

In short… when the unfortunate girl finally untangled herself, not without our help, she was in a sorry state. I understood her. You can endure a single painful blow to your self-esteem without reevaluating your values and self-importance. But two in a row…

Setsuna went quiet. Then, unusually timidly, without any energy, she asked if she could stay and watch our training. Her voice was quiet, broken.

Of course, we allowed it.

We could already start worrying about the future heroine…

But the dyed blonde quickly recovered, earning yet another respectful look mixed with a smirk. No, seriously, her stress resistance and adaptability, her psychological flexibility, are incredible.

By the end of the training, which was an hour and a half later, she was bouncing around us, shouting excitedly things like, "Wow! What's that move called? Nothing? Let's call it 'Staff Technique: Axis of the World!' Cool? Tell me it's cool!" and "Hey, monster, I want to be the first to get your autograph!"

"I'm afraid I'll have to disappoint you, Tokage-san," I replied, interrupting the sparring session, as the timer had gone off. It was time to leave—schedule, strict daily routine, all that. "I've already promised the first autograph to my dad."

"Nuuu…" Setsuna whined. Then she snapped out of it and began enthusiastically waving her arms around: "Well, no matter, no matter, Niren-chan, we'll show them all! When we get recommended to the same class… though there are three of us. Hmm… Yui, Yui, you're amazing, you should get a recommendation too! And then…"

While unwrapping the bandages, I was simultaneously thinking about how to gently let her know that I had refused the recommendation. Oh, I got it!

"Tokage-san, I refused the recommendation."

"…and then our costumes will be in the same color scheme, and… Huh?!"

I had to explain.

Obviously, I couldn't reveal the two main reasons to anyone. Neither the fact that I needed to get into Class "A" specifically nor that I was almost one hundred percent sure what the entrance exam would be like, and therefore wasn't worried about my results, being confident in the outcome.

As I knew from the previous world, the entrance test in our admission year would be a massive brawl with a bunch of fragile but intimidating robots, where each defeated bot would be a point for attack, and each rescued comrade would be a point for, accordingly, rescue.

Why am I "almost" sure about this? Because the U.A. entrance exam changes from year to year, and besides differences in the setting of the training ground—sometimes a city, sometimes a beach, sometimes a park, and so on—they don't always use robots. Yes, just five years ago, hired heroes from the lower ranks and senior students were fighting against the applicants. Yeah, that doesn't sound very fair.

…but the third reason for my refusal of the recommendation, which I did voice to Setsuna and, as it turned out, fully shared with Yui, was not a lie.

My soul, long sunk into the whirlpool of routine, training, and sparring, literally CRAVED a fight.

I wanted a real battle and competition with a real opponent so badly that my hands were shaking… even if they were harmless tin cans and mutant school kids.

“…In short, Tokage-san, I believe that all people who want to achieve something need victories. Your confidence in your abilities is measured by your achievements. And I want victories and want to be confident in myself."

After listening to my answer and remaining silent for a while as I meditated on the bandages I was wrapping, Tokage hesitantly addressed me:

"Niren… I mean, Shoda-kun..."

I raised an eyebrow.

"I mean, Shoda-san!"

I raised the second one.

"Oh, damn, uh, Shoda-sama?..."

I had no more eyebrows left to raise, so I just sighed wearily and said:

"Drop the honorifics, I can't stand them anymore. If at least someone could avoid them in conversation with me and just talk like a human, but no, it's always this cultural code... Just Niren or just Shoda… Tokage-saaan."

"Huh?! That's not fair!!"

"It happens," I said philosophically, shrugging.

Setsuna nearly crossed her eyes.

"Are you kidding me?"

"So, what did you want?" I asked, changing the subject since the girl, thanks to her indignation, had already shaken off her odd inhibition.

She took a deep breath again, as she always did before making some wild suggestion, so I wasn't even surprised:

"Train me! Please! Or rather," her gaze briefly darted to the slightly surprised Yui, "train me! Please!"

My first thought was: why do I need this headache?

I had to suppress a sigh of frustration.

Judging by Kodai's expression, we agreed on this thought as well.

…And then came the second thought, which immediately made me more serious.

Ahead—there's a war.

Sooner or later, I'll trample enough butterflies for the story to unfold differently from the future I know.

I can't predict what will happen and how.

And so I can't predict who will be in the line of fire and who might die.

It's hard to think about, but it's necessary.

Ahead—there's a war.

Between old and new, heroes and villains, gray and black.

And at the epicenter of this war will be teenagers—yesterday's schoolchildren who have barely learned… something.

If I can improve anyone's chances of survival, it is my sacred duty.

Maybe this way, I'll save the life of this funny, cheerful girl.

After all, I am… a hero, right?

So you already know what I answered.

"Why not?"

Illustrations:

Setsuna's natural hair color and her fangs (the wiki lies again; she has pointed teeth in both the anime and manga).

A representative manifestation of Setsuna's abilities.

...and her big eyes, too.