Chapter 74: Chapter 74: Training from Hell
"Itadakimasu!"
As soon as they washed up their faces and hands, they immediately rushed towards the canteen.
Shido and Eri who had eaten their fill during tea time weren't feeling very hungry, so they only ate a little bit. However, those who arrived at 5.20 pm were starving like wolves, and they hurriedly gulped down every crumb of food in front of them. Some of them were even snatching their friends' food while chewing on their own, causing a lot of fight to break out.
The instructors didn't bother with them and ate in another room, free from all the noise they were making.
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"What I'm after is right on the other side of this wall here..." Mineta crouched down and laid his entire head as close to the wall as possible.
"What're you mumbling about over there, Mineta?" Izuku saw his weird actions and asked.
"Yes...they're really there...guess they don't have girls and boys bathe at different times, nowadays. An accident...yes, we might just have a little accident here." Mineta mumbled creepily as his eyes aimed towards the top and drool started to leak out of his mouth .
"Stop that at once, Mineta!" Tenya immediately shouted with his rigid and strict actions as usual,"What you're considering would bring shame to both yourself and our female classmates!"
Mineta closed his eyes and replied in a calm tone,"So strict..."
However, the moment he said that, he immediately started using his quirk to climb on the wall.
"We're here to overcome those walls!! Plus Ultra!!"
"So quick!"
"Don't defile our school motto like that!!"
Just as Mineta was about to reach the top, Shido's smiling face suddenly appeared in front of Mineta.
"Hello. How're you doing in the bath?"
Shido's smile didn't look very happy at all as Mineta immediately let go of his balls in shock.
"AHHH!!!" Mineta screamed as he fell back down to the water.
"So noisy...no more business like this all right, boys?" Shido said sternly.
"B-But you have the opportunity to peek! It's unfair!!" Mineta crouched down in depression as he complained and yelled his heart out.
Shido just shrugged and pointed behind him,"No really, Eri is here as well and she would kill me if I ever attempted to peek. Plus, I'm twelve. What do you want me to think after peeking at them? They're pretty, sure, but I'm not interested in any of them."
Eri, who had her back towards Shido's back smiled happily when she heard his words.
'Good.'
"Mineta's really the worst, huh?"
"Thanks, Itsuka-sensei!"
The girls cheered when they heard that Shido stopped Mineta from peeking.
Shido didn't turn to face them and just waved his hand in acknowledgement.
Soon, both sides returned back to their peaceful discussion and no more funny business happened.
"Oh year, what happened to Yoshinon?"
"Oh, he got taken by the wild, wild, pussycats since they seem to have taken a liking to him."
Both of them chuckled as he remembered Yoshinon trying to struggle out of their hands, especially from the muscular male cat.
A period of quietness appeared once more.
"Ne, Eri." Shido said as he kept watch over the boys.
"Hm?" Eri stopped looking at the girls and turned her head slightly to face Shido.
"Do you believe in outer space?"
"What are you saying? Of course I do! Where do you think the sun and moon are located?"
Shido realised the stupidity of his question when he heard her reply and cleared his throat awkwardly.
"Ahem...I mean, do you believe that there are different worlds out there?"
Eri seemed as though he wanted to say something but before she could, Shido continued,"I can create a wormhole, and theoretically, scientists have speculated that a wormhole is a structure linking disparate points in spacetime, and was based on a special solution of the Einstein field equations from almost half a millennium ago."
Eri didn't interrupt and let him continue.
"Meaning, that if I ever open a wormhole without fully controlling the distance or the size, I might be able to link this world to a whole new world out there."
Shido raised his head and hands towards the stars and said,"Look at the stars up there in the night sky."
Eri followed his actions and to her surprise, the sky was free of clouds. During the entirety of this training camp, she had never actually looked at the sky like this and did not realise that it was cloudless.
"Wow..." Eri could only mutter in front of the millions of dazzling stars that littered the blank, black night sky.
Shido chuckled at Eri's starstruck expression,"Amazing, isn't it? Now, Imagine that each star is a world on it's own. In our solar system, only Earth contains life, but we haven't managed to explore places outside our solar system.
Imagine the possibilities. What if they were humans without quirk living out there? What if they had some sort of superpowers that they use instead of our quirks?"
"And what if...I wasn't...from this...world...?" Shido asked very quietly, so quietly that no one managed to hear him in the midst of the boys' rowdy bath and the girls' boisterous chat.
"Hm...I don't know. I think it would be fun and interesting to see new things." Eri smiled happily as she imagined all the new things that she would be able to discover before turning her head back to Shido with a weird expression and asking,"Why are you asking all this anyway?"
"Nothing."
Eri didn't look convinced but she decided to drop it for now. She could always ask him later anyway.
Both of them had nothing more to talk about and spent the rest of the time with their heads facing the night sky, enjoying the view.
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The next morning at 5 am, the alarm rang loudly, rudely waking everyone up from their dreams.
"Morning, kids." Like any time of the day, Shota greeted with his usual monotonous voice and red eyes.
As the students were all still half-asleep, no one replied to him but it didn't bother Shota. He just continued talking,"Today, the real training camp begins. Ideally, you will all emerge stronger. Strong enough to acquire your provisional licenses. More specifically, there's a growing hostile force out there. Through this, you'll be prepared to face it...so stay sharp and work hard."
Throwing a ball towards Katsuki, he instructed,"To start...here, Bakugo. Try throwing this."
"This is...from the strength trials..." Katsuki stated as he felt the familiarity of the ball in his palms.
"Last time, right after school started, your record was...705.2 metres...how much have you grown since then?" Shido wondered as he looked at Katsuki.
While the class encouraged Katsuki, the man in question was warming up his right hand as he prepared to throw.
"Here we freaking go...GO TO HELL!!!"
Shota took a look at the beeping device in his hands and showed the result: 709.6 metres.
"Huh...? Not much farther than before..."
The class became confused at the result Katsuki had gotten.
"Yes. You have been through a lot these past three months. Undoubtedly, you've all grown."
"But it's only your techniques and minds that have matured. Well, and your bodies, a bit."
"But as you've all just seen, your quirks haven't been kept up with the pace. So starting today, you'll improve on your quirks."
"This'll be so harsh that you'll wish you were dead, so do your best to...stay alive..."
Shido and Shota spoke on alternated turns, but they both ended with a sadistic smile on their faces.
The entire class shuddered at the sight of their smile.
"Well, that's enough talking. Let's get moving instead." Shido started moving in one direction before everyone else grudgingly followed.
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"Improve our quirks...?!"
"Class A's already at it, so let's get moving." Vlad King said enthusiastically,"Class A stole the spotlight every time in the first semester, so the second semester's gonna be class B's time to shine. Got that? Not class A. Us!"
While Vlad King was having his passionate speech, the class behind him were shedding tears.
"You say 'improve your quirks' like it's nothing...but there are twenty of us, all with different quirks...how do we each go about doing this...?"
"Can we get some details here?"
As they walked, Vlad King began to answer some of the questions.
"Overusing your muscles ends up tearing the fibres, but then they recover and get thicker and stronger. Quirks are the same. They get stronger through continued use and if they're underutilised! Which means there's only one thing you gotta do..."
"Um...sensei?"
"Yes?"
"Why is it getting hotter as we walk?"
"And why is there music as well?"
At those questions, even Vlad Kind was stuck. He didn't know where they came from.
As they reached where class 1-A was training, they felt as if they had passed through some sort of 'barrier' before their jaw dropped.
What they saw was a scene from hell.
The entire area was a fiery mess, but no one was slacking off.
In the midst of the violent heat, Shoto was standing in the middle and trying to prevent the entire area from overheating.
Yuga was shooting his laser beams everywhere, lighting up the entire area which was covered in some sort of dark dome while Denki was getting used to electricity by constantly pumping electricity into himself, lighting up that area in the process. In a hill somewhere nearby, the heteromorphic and composite types were training their extra parts and appendages like Tsuyu training her frog legs and tongue and Mezo who was training his tentacles.
Koji was in a dark cave filled with insects and bugs, while Katsuki was constantly exploding his palms out.
Ojiro was training his tail strength by constantly beating Eijiro, who was training his defence.
Mineta was bleeding from his scalp as he constantly plucked his balls, while Momo and Rikido were constantly eating and using their quirks at the same time.
"Er...normally, you'd be doing all this at the same rate your bodies grow..." Vlad King started but Shota, who spotted their class, immediately came over and interrupted him,"But there's no time for all that. Get to it, class B."
"But there are forty of us altogether. How can just the six of you oversee all of us and our quirks?" Itsuka asked as she looked around curiously.
"That's why we have these ladies." Shota didn't look very pleased when he said the word 'ladies'.
"That's right. We're four parts of a whole!"
"Rock on with these sparkling gazes!"
"We've come to lend a paw to help!!"
"We've come from...somewhere..."
"Stingingly cute and catlike!"
""""Wild, wild, pussycats!!!""""
And with the complete version of their weird pose, they ended their chant/ritual/routine.
"My quirk is 'search'!! I know everything about anyone I lay eyes on, up to 100 people at a time! Including location and weaknesses!" Ragdoll introduced herself while maintaining that pose.
Ragdoll is a young woman of medium height with long, emerald green hair and big round yellow eyes that are almost always open all the way, three small eyelashes located toward the top of each eye. As a part of her costume, she draws pink marks on her cheeks that resemble whiskers and a pink circle around her right eye.
"With my 'earthflow', I can create the perfect training environment for each of you!" Pixie-bob showed an example of her quirk by levitating a mud ball before dropping her wide smile and continuing with a depressed voice,"Not that it matters too much when that guy is here...."
"Huh?"
"And I use my 'telepath' to give advice to each of you, all at once." Mandalay introduced her quirk.
The final lady was not a lady. In her place, was a muscular man who sported a similar costume to the other wild, wild pussycats, Tiger.
Or maybe he was a lady, but no one knows.
"And I'm here to punch and kick you into shape...!" He said with a villain-like smile before continuing,"All you power-ups types, you're coming with me! My boot camp's already begun."
Everybody looked dead-panned at his old-school tactics while he looked at Izuku, who was behind him, and said,"Now. Come at me."
Izuku didn't hesitate before immediately dashing to him.
"35% Detroit smash!!"
Despite that quick speed and surprise attack, the man didn't even seem fazed as he casually bent his back until a upside down 'U' shape formed.
"Okaaay. Not quite sharp enough yet!!"
Izuku had trained before with his personal trainers, but they were aimed at conditioning him to the best condition his body could ever go. Meaning no harmful side-effects whatsoever. Everything was done to the limit the human body could bear.
However, in this training camp, no one cared about the thing known as 'limit'. This was UA High School! And their motto is 'Plus Ultra!', breaking past your limit and going beyond.
Of course, with the influence of Shido, Izuku's already hard training plan was bumped up a notch.
"It's proof you're not ripping those muscles apart enough!! Cat Punch!" Tiger casually countered with a cat punch. But even his casual punch managed to knock Izuku a few metres back.
"Yes sir!"
"I can't hear you."
"Yessir!!!!"
"Plus ultra, right? Then show me that ultra!!" Tiger squinted his eyes and smiled, making his already scary face even more scary.
"Anyways, because Shido is here, I have nothing to do, so I'm going to help facilitate you guys..." Pixie-bob said after Tiger's mini demonstration, still in her depressed tone.
Vlad King was surprised. He received no information on Shido prior to now, and only knows that he's very strong after that five versus one fight he had.
"What's wrong with Shido?"
Pixie-bob looked at Vlad King before rushing towards him while wailing loudly and hugging him.
"What?!" Vlad King was shocked that this spinster hugged him.
"Waahhh!! My job got robbed by a little kid...He has an ability to manipulate the environment around him...why do you think this place is so dark and hot? He originally made this entire area pitch black such that nobody could even see things that were right in front of them. Only when Aizawa said that their training had already begun did everybody do their best to light up the area."
Vlad King and his class were shocked as they looked around the area more closely. Unlike last time, they could clearly see a thin layer separating the training area with the area outside.
However, Pixie-bob didn't stop there and continued to reveal their entire training regime.
"Not only that, this entire area was originally boiling hot. If not for Momo and Shoto trying their best to cool down the area, everybody would have boiled to death. The rest were either in charge of lighting up the area, cooling down the area or changing the area such that it would be easier to survive. Even the pervert Mineta managed to help by arranging his heat-insulator hair balls thingy on the ground so that everyone's foot wouldn't get burnt!"
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