English class with Present Mic felt like it was giving him whiplash.

Yasu really didn't need to pay too much attention to the sentences that went up on the blackboard, his previous run through life giving him the huge advantage of already being fluent in the language. That being the case, he was used to daydreaming his way through English classes and just answering any questions put to him.

With Present Mic at the front of the room though...

"EVERYBODY HEY! GOOD MORNING 1-A!"

...dreams of any sort were more or less off the table.

Present Mic was tall and slim with long blond hair, spiked upwards in a huge tuft behind his head, and a small, brown mustache below his yellow-green eyes. His Hero outfit consisted of a studded black leather jacket with a tall collar, matching black pants and large boots. The jacket had a set of elbow and shoulder pads, and a pair of black fingerless gloves completed the punk rock look. Around his neck was a heavy looking speaker used to enhance his Quirk...not that the man needed any help in the volume department, as far as Yasu was concerned.

The Hero's personal-brand headphones and shades brought it all together, really; though Yasu might have been biased, since he'd bought a pair of his own years before.

Nemesis of his daydreams or not, Present Mic's podcast was an absolute treasure, and his headphones were damn good.

The actual lesson plan for the class was fairly normal all things considered, a quick lesson and independent practice of the concept in class. None of it required more than passing attention from Yasu himself, so he mostly used the time to observe their teacher. It wasn't the obvious thing to do though – when the man wanted their attention he got it easily, but the rest of the time he was so quiet that he seemed invisible in comparison to his boisterous outbursts. He walked through the class, offering murmured advice to certain students, pointing things out and answering questions when people put their hands up.

It intrigued him to see how Hizashi swapped between his personas of 'educator' and 'Pro Hero' so easily and so often.

'I wonder if these are the only two personas he has,' Yasu thought to himself, correcting several sentences on his worksheet. 'Is he like this at home as well? And what about other Pro Heroes? Do they act differently in costume, in class and in civvies?'

"WHEN YOU GET THAT DONE LITTLE LISTENERS, COME TURN IT IN AND GRAB YOUR HOMEWORK! CAN'T BE SLACKING ANY DAY HERE AT U.A.!"

Ah well. Questions for another time.

The class finished soon afterwards, Yasu taking the time between Hizashi leaving and the next teacher arriving to get a headstart on the homework. Some other students had the same idea, putting their heads down, but others started chatting idly, excited small talk and introductions being exchanged between the more social members of class 1-A. Yasu himself would have taken the time to introduce himself to more than a few people, but his priorities were a little different.

Pulling out his phone so as not to be suspicious, he began to scroll mindlessly through an app for appearances' sake. Out of the corner of his eye, though, Yasu was keeping an eye on Hojo.

As far as first impressions went, Hojo had made a pretty shitty one in his opinion..

Their conversation the day prior had revealed jack shit about the gangster-looking teen, all of Yasu's attempts to make conversation and gather some information had been brushed off immediately with quick retorts. He wasn't going to constantly harass the larger teen, but a little polite conversation couldn't have been that painful for Hojo.

Evidence, however, spoke to the contrary.

The second Present Mic had gotten out the door, Hojo had grabbed a set of headphones from his bag and plugged himself in. His phone lay on the desk in front of him, beside the book he'd pulled out of his bag and was focussing on with laser-like intensity, ignoring everything around him.

Funny enough, Hojo wasn't the only one. Across the classroom, Yasu spotted one Shoto Todoroki making a concerted and successful effort to block out anyone and everyone's attempts to make conversation.

'So we've got Todoroki, and Todoroki part two. Fantastic,' Yasu thought, deciding Hojo wasn't going to do anything worth seeing any time soon and putting his phone away. 'Problem is I only know why one of them is that introverted.'

"Excuse me!"

A shout brought Yasu out of his thoughts, as a large figure entered his vision.

"Sorry for not introducing myself yesterday on the walk to the station!" A hand shot out in front of his face. "My name is Tenya Iida and it is a pleasure to officially meet you!"

Yasu blinked a couple of times before chuckling. Ochaco did drag him to the station with Tenya and Izuku in tow after classes the day prior...not that Yasu had been able to get a word in during that entire time. Not with Ochaco's usual runaway babble.

The blond gripped Tenya's hand, giving it a firm shake. "Yasu Setsuno, sorry I didn't get to do introductions yesterday."

"It is better to do them now than never," Tenya told him. "I believe that we should all get to know each other if we are spending the next several years as a class." The heavily-built teen nodded sagely. "Our collaboration is paramount to becoming Heroes."

Yasu raised an eyebrow. "You gonna go around to each person and give the same spiel Tenya?" He chuckled. "Maybe tone it down slightly, you're a little intimidating sometimes."

He looked surprised. "Am I? I think a formal introduction is the best way to go about it."

"It works on a professional level sure, but not a personal one dude," Yasu commented. "As a Hero you've got to appeal to a wide group of people, being full on formal all the time won't help with that."

"I'd never thought of it that way…" Tenya muttered, cupping his chin. "You certainly have a good insight into the traits of a Pro Hero, Setsuno."

"Call me Yasu," the blond replied, "and it ain't that deep." He waved his hand. "Just be aware of it man, it's like you said, collaboration helps us all be better."

Tenya's smile was wide, and he was about to say something before the door slammed open to admit the teacher for their next period. Modern Hero Art History was next on the docket, if Yasu was remembering correctly...and seeing the figure in the doorway, he was reminded viscerally who the teacher was.

"Alright everyone~" Midnight called in her usual sultry tone, strutting across the front of the room and cocking her hip beside the teacher's lectern. "Take your seats and get ready~"

She licked her lips.

If Yasu heard a single "Ara ara~" out of her, he was going to bolt.

-x-x-x-x-x-

"What are you eating there Yasu? It's lunchtime, not breakfast," Ochaco commented, digging into her rice. "I thought you'd be all over the Sushi bar."

Yasu looked down at his lunch, oatmeal with mixed fruit and some water. "What? We've got Basic Hero Training after this and I wanted something light. It's slow releasing carbs and the fruits have vitamins and nutrients that—"

"We get it, you health nut!" Ochaco cut him off, raising her hands in front of her and grinning. "You're missing out on this great food though."

Yasu raised an eyebrow, looking across the table at Tenya's choice of food. "Great food huh?"

Tenya looked up, swallowing his mouthful of food. "The food is indeed excellent, as expected of U.A.'s facilities."

"I can't believe that all the staff are Pro Heroes!" Izuku chimed in. "I mean, we got served by Lunch Rush! Six years ago, he prepared a full-course french meal for nearly ten-thousand hurricane victims, by himself!"

"Ten thousand?! That's amazing! How'd he do it?" Ochaco exclaimed, leaning over the table a bit towards Izuku, who was seated across from her.

The boy started flushing red, like he always did whenever Ochaco focussed her attention on him, but the previous day's exposure therapy had apparently done wonders, because he was still able to answer her question. "W-well, you see, his Quirk allows him to—"

Yasu tuned out that side of the conversation, choosing to focus on Tenya and pick up where they'd left off. "I'll buy that it's good stuff, yeah, but curry and orange juice? That's kinda gross dude."

The larger teen looked a little surprised. "It's certainly not a optimal flavor combination, but I require orange juice to fuel the engines on my legs."

Yasu blinked. "Wait, the engines on your legs are fueled by orange juice?" Tenya nodded, and Yasu shook his head. "How'd you even figure that out?"

"My family have similar engine Quirks, and each of them are fueled by a different type of juice," Tenya explained. "With that characteristic in mind, once my mufflers started to grow in discovering my fuel source was simply a matter of trial and error."

"Yeah but how?" Yasu pressured. "Why did your Quirk randomly pick orange juice as a fuel source? And how does your body even convert it into propulsion?"

Tenya's glasses seemed to catch the light for a moment, flashing pure white. "It's a fascinating process actually," he began. "Through x-rays we've found out that—"

"Ah!"

Izuku chose that moment to jump into the conversation, robbing Yasu of the forbidden knowledge. "I thought your Quirk was familiar, it's like the Turbo Hero: Ingenium!"

Tenya, who was by no means a small guy or slouching in his seat, still managed to swell in size at Izuku's words. "He's my elder brother," he said proudly, "and a Hero who I hope to be like one day."

"Wow!" Izuku gasped, his lunch apparently completely forgotten as he turned to face Tenya more. "What was it like having him as your older brother growing up? Did you get to go to his agency and train under him? What's he like as a person? I've followed his agency for a long time now..."

Despite the deluge of questions that poured from the smaller teen's mouth, Tenya took it all in stride. "It was quite the experience," he declared. "It's given me a good head start on the ins and outs of working for an agency as well as the details of a Hero's daily life…"

Yasu tuned their conversation out much as he had Izuku and Ochaco's, deciding to focus on finishing his oatmeal. Ochaco bumped his shoulder, giving him a look, but Yasu waved her off. It wasn't like someone just mentioning an older brother was going to get him down in the dumps.

As he finished up his meal and stood up to take the tray away, Yasu glanced around the cafeteria. More than a few heads stood out to him, and he had to hold a laugh back as he looked around just in time to see a certain purple-haired midget get slapped with a giant hand and go tumbling away across the floor.

For better or for worse, it seemed that Mineta had still ended up in U.A. Maybe even in Class 1-B, if the girl with that Quirk was dealing with him.

It was good to see they had a firm grasp of the situation.

Chuckling to himself and sweeping his gaze around further, Yasu spotted Hojo sitting alone in the back corner of the room, headphones no doubt blaring music to tune everything else out as his book was propped up and open in front of him. His lunch consisted of an omelette filled with a mixture of meat and vegetables, from what Yasu could see.

Even when he took bites of it though, the teen didn't seem to show a single expression that indicated disgust or enjoyment of the food.

It really drove home for Yasu that he knew jack about Hojo, other than a few details about his Quirk, and that he was built like a brick house with a personality to match.

'Doesn't matter for the moment,' Yasu decided, turning away to get his tray bussed. 'I'll get to see just what you can do soon enough.'

-x-x-x-x-x-

"I AM—"

The thunderous voice echoed through the 1-A classroom only moments before the door crashed open, revealing a red-clad figure that towered over even the tallest students in the room.

"—COMING THROUGH THE DOOR LIKE A NORMAL PERSON!"

All Might burst into the classroom, his personality practically suffocating the room in excited chatter and amazement within a second.

Yasu was honestly just as star-struck as he was the day prior. All Might was literally the pillar of society, and the prospect of being taught by such a man had shivers going up his spine...even if, deep down, he knew just what the man behind the Might was going through.

The Hero was wearing his Silver Age costume, which...well, suited him a whole lot more than the suit Yasu had seen him in previously. The whole thing was skintight, displaying the man's superhuman musculature to the world, except for the blue cape that fell from his shoulders down to his ankles. The torso and arms were bright red, and the legs the same dark blue as the cape, with bright-yellow bracers and boots the same colour as his hair. That same yellow made up most of his belt, except for the silver buckle at the front with two red 'eyes' and yellow 'eyebrows' on it.

The whole thing was detailed in with white lines, and taken in together it made for one of the most American things that Yasu had ever seen in his life.

"I teach Basic Hero Training!" All Might began once he reached the lectern, striking an inspiring pose at the front of the classroom. "The subject where you train in all the basics that are essential to being a Hero, which will make up most of your studies here at U.A.!"

As almost every student in the room strained to keep themselves from squeeing, All Might reached under the lectern. "Let's get right into it, shall we? Today is all about—" He paused, pulling out a card to stare at for a moment, then striking another pose and presenting it to the class. "COMBAT TRAINING!"

Excited and worried shouts echoed across the classroom as he continued. "And to go along with it, are these!" On the wall to All Might's right and the students' left, four metal bands that had been sitting flush with the wall began to push out of it, revealing that they were actually single-column racks containing five numbered cases each, totalling twenty. "The costumes based on your Quirk registrations are finally ready for you! The requests you sent in before school started have been finished as well!"

The chatter in the room grew even louder, and when Yasu glanced over at Ochaco she was bouncing up and down in her seat with excitement.

He even spotted a smile on the ever stoic Hojo, and Yasu couldn't keep his own suppressed. 'Finally, time to cut loose and show them what I can really do.'

"After you change, gather in Ground Beta!" All Might flashed a smile. "The real training starts now!"

-x-x-x-x-x-

Kei was first out of the changing room.

Mostly, that came down to the fact that his 'costume' was...fairly minimalistic. A pair of tough, but stretchy knee-length black shorts with multiple pockets, some boots with regularly spaced and sized holes in the undersides and a belt with several labelled containers. That was the lot; he imagined that the workers charged with bringing students' designs to life were rather relieved to see his cross their desk.

The main onus of his apparel rested quite literally on his shoulders.

It was sprouting even as he made his walk down a long, dark corridor towards the sunny battle center. First came solid single pieces along the forearms and calves, along with several plates on the front and back of the torso. Then, the spaces between those plates filled in with a flexible, stretchy blue crystal that became almost invisible behind tiny, scale-like segments of the same carbon fiber that made up the larger pieces that had come before.

By the time he emerged into the sun, Kei was just growing the last of the carbon fiber over his hands' blue coating, flexing his fingers to check their motion more out of habit than any real need. He'd been growing his own armour for years, especially since the onset of puberty; adapting to his own constant growth had given him all the experience he could need.

The carbon fiber was only the underlayer though. He'd specialise the outer layers once he knew who he was going to be facing in the test.

For the present moment, however, he was just stuck waiting for everyone else…

...with All Might.

Now that he wasn't focussed on growing his armour, Kei found himself abruptly aware of the fact that the Number One Hero was standing right in front of him, arms crossed, smile in place, waiting for the other students.

Except, of course, they weren't there yet.

Just Kei.

So All Might was just...standing there expectantly.

Smiling at him.

Kei had to fight the impulse to just start walking backwards until he was in the corridor again.

Several moments of increasing awkward silence passed as Kei found himself staring into the sky beside All Might's left ear, and the Pro Hero just...kept smiling.

"...So, young man, did Aizawa's advice prove useful?"

Kei blinked rapidly as the silence broke out of nowhere, his eyes refocusing on All Might's face. "I'm sorry?"

"I was asking if you and your friend had managed to find the facilities Aizawa told you about yesterday," the Hero replied.

"Ah...yes," Kei answered.

"I see. That's good then!" All Might declared, his smile seeming to widen somehow, his brilliantly white teeth flashing in a way that Kei would normally expect to see from his own.

"...Yes," Kei agreed, for lack of any other obvious responses.

Silence returned.

'Oh God, what the hell is taking the others so long, Ojiro's entire costume is literally a gi!'

Kei was about three seconds from vomiting out a question about the weather when the sound of semi-synchronised footsteps started to echo down the corridor behind him. He did his best to hide his sigh of relief...but motion in the corner of his eye caught his attention, and he turned to All Might to find the Hero looking right back at him, in the exact same post-sigh posture as Kei himself.

Teacher and student both stared at one another for a moment, before they simultaneously turned to stare forwards and pretend that the last three minutes had never happened to either of them.

"In Europe, they say that the clothes make the man!" All Might began in his usual booming tone, the somewhat awkward air that had surrounded him when Kei arrived disappearing now that he had a crowd in front of him. "Well, my students, now that you have these costumes, always remember – with these, you are Heroes!"

Several figures drew even with Kei at about the time All Might finished speaking. Glancing sideways across the lineup, most of the costumes pulled at his memory, bringing up little nonsense flashes of songs, lines and scenes. The only one that didn't, was the only one that he expected not to.

Setsuno's costume was mostly blue with black linework, most of it around the ankles, waist and wrists although two lines speared from the center-line of the legs all the way up to the shoulders, where they disappeared into the black shoulderpads. He was wearing bracers and boots of the same colour, the boots with what looked like metal plates leaning against the sides, and the dark colours were at stark contrast with the inlaid, silver Delta symbol in the center of the chest.

If he hadn't known to look for the odd man out, Kei honestly might have had to look twice for him; Setsuno was wearing a neck gaiter of the same blue as the rest of his costume, hoisted high enough to cover his face from the nose down, and a set of black goggles resting on his forehead lessened how noticeable his blond hair was.

"You all look great, everybody!" All Might declared, lowering his arms from their folded position to his hips. "Now little tadpoles; shall we get started?"

-x-x-x-

All Might's explanation of the battle trial they were about to experience wasn't anything Kei hadn't expected.

Two-person teams would be chosen by lottery, then another lottery would set those teams against one another in pairs. The exercise itself would take place inside one of the center's empty buildings, renovated for the purpose of the trial, and was a fairly simple capture-the-flag style game. One team, designated the 'villains', had to hide a 'nuclear weapon' inside the building and defend it, either by making sure the 'hero' team couldn't touch it in fifteen minutes, or by capturing the 'heroes' by tying a length of the white ribbon they'd been given around them. The 'heroes' won if they touched the weapon or managed to likewise capture the villain team.

The unexpected came when the team draws began. The first declared team, Toru Hagakure and Mashirao Ojiro, didn't set off any alarms...but the second did. "Team B, Izuku Midoriya and Tenya Iida!"

Kei's eyebrows rose a bit. He was a touch surprised, but quickly realised he shouldn't have been – the presence of his own name in the ballot, and the presence of Setsuno's, not to mention the absences of Mineta and Koji's, would be more than enough to change the results of All Might's draws.

With that edge of excitement, he listened in for the two names he particularly wanted to hear. "Team C, Kei Hojo and Denki Kaminari!"

Kei's lip twitched, and when his gaze slowly panned over to his left he found himself meeting a slanted, yellow-eyed gaze.

Kaminari's hair was blond and relatively short, parted to the right with a black lightning-shaped streak on the left of his side fringe, a bit above where the hair covered his left eye. He was on the slim side of the class's male students, more of a runner than a lifter, with a fairly plain costume. A simple white shirt under an open black jacket with a white lightning pattern across the back, matching pants with white lines running down the legs and a single, square-shaped earphone over his right ear, something resembling a radio antenna sticking out of the top.

He was grinning.

When he noticed Kei looking at him, he gave a thumbs-up.

Kei swallowed his groan in time to hear the next name he'd been listening for. "Team I, Yasu Setsuno and Tsuyu Asui!"

Kei pursed his lips, considering. That was a pretty high-mobility team, though he imagined that Setsuno's effectiveness would be somewhat curtailed in such an enclosed area. He had no such considerations for Asui; the corridors would be a veritable shooting gallery for her tongue, and she could probably clear all of one in a single leap.

Still, there was no guarantee that it would be his problem at all. That didn't stop him from gripping his armoured biceps as All Might rummaged through the box of papers with the team letters on them to determine the matchups.

"Alright students," the blond finally declared. "The first team matchup will be…"

Two papers were pulled from the box in one massive fist, and All Might raised them high after a quick glance. "Team G as the heroes, versus Team C as the villains!"

Kei blinked. Okay, he'd be up first, that was expedient if nothing else. Now, who had Team G been again…?

He glanced sideways once more to look down the lineup of students...and once again there was a gaze coming his way.

A heterochromatic gaze.

Neck-length hair, parted twice to keep it out of his eyes, divided down the center of his skull into white and red, standing out even against his eyes – one a ruddy, reddish brown, the other a piercing turquoise. Taller than Kaminari, but still a good head shorter than Kei, almost the entire left side of his body concealed by a layer of what looked like plastic masquerading as ice, his eye covered by a glowing, robotic red lens. The rest of his costume was a plain, off-white shirt with matching pants and boots, with two gold-colored straps going over his shoulders.

It was a rather silly, almost unassuming costume for probably the most powerful student in the class.

All Might was reading off the rest of the team matchups in the background...but Kei's matte armour was already beginning to sparkle as new crystals grew from its surface.

If ever there could be a deep end for 1-A to throw him into, pitting him against Todoroki Shoto was it.

"Now then, everybody but teams C and G head to the monitor room to the right; the rest of you, follow me!"

As All Might led on, blue cape fluttering his wake, Kei set off after him, Kaminari doing his best to keep up with his shorter legs. Not far to their left, Todoroki did the same...and so did his partner.

Shorter than even Midoriya, though not massively so, with a somewhat sturdier build than most of the other girls in class, hers was probably the class's most eye-catching mutation. Her skin and short, fluffy hair were both bubblegum pink, as if just to add contrast to the small, yellow horns that poked up out of her skull, and the pitch-black sclera of her eyes that surrounded the light-yellow irises.

Her costume was mostly made up of a purple and turquoise skintight bodysuit with a camouflage pattern that covered her from the top of her plum-violet and beige boots to most of the way up her torso, stopping just short enough to show off her clavicle and some cleavage. That area was also framed by a sleeveless, unbuttoned tan waistcoat with white fur along its collar. It was topped off with a plain white mask over her eyes.

'Mina Ashido,' Kei considered, and his lip twitched upwards. 'I suppose there is some good luck with the bad.'

-x-x-x-

Once they reached the building that the trial would be taking place in, All Might handed out two pairs of earpieces, each one broadcasting to its partner in the pair and the monitor room. Visual surveillance would be taken care of by cameras in the building, and the Pro Hero instructed the four to remain in place until he gave the command before disappearing in a cloud of dust towards the monitor room.

That left Kei, Kaminari, Ashido and Todoroki all standing around at the front, silently.

For all of two seconds.

"Yo!" Ashido greeted almost immediately, grinning widely. "I'm Mina!"

"Yo!" Kaminari greeted right back, grinning just as widely. "I'm Denki!"

Kei momentarily glanced towards the heavens and wished for strength; when he looked down, he found himself meeting Todoroki's gaze...and as their partners started chattering and bantering, the two of them shared a moment of silent commiseration and mutual pity.

Then All Might's voice came across the earpieces, telling the villain team that their five minutes of setup time had begun, and Kei immediately jogged into the building. Behind him, he heard Kaminari trade some last words with Ashido before another set of running footsteps joined his own.

Not a word was spoken until they reached the fifth and final floor of the building, following signs to the staircases to make their way up. Compared to the fairly claustrophobic, maze-like, metal-plated corridors that had led to it, the top floor was one wide, open space with several supporting pillars keeping the roof up, a variety of detritus such as wooden planks, rusty barrels and cardboard boxes scattered around. The 'nuclear weapon' stood in the centre of the room. It was about twice Kei's height and he could probably wrap his arms all the way around it four times over at its widest point. A quick check, however, revealed that it wasn't very heavy at all. 'So it really is just papier-mache.'

Well this gave him a few ideas.

"So, uh, should we talk about the plan now?"

Kei blinked.

Turning around, he found Kaminari with his arms folded, a slightly uncertain smile on his face. "I figured you didn't walk to talk about that in front of the other two, and plus you were growing that cool armour, but we've only got about five minutes now so…" Kaminari jabbed a thumb back at himself. "Like All Might said, I'm Denki Kaminari and my Quirk is Electrification. It lets me generate electricity from my body, though I can't really control where it goes if I let it loose." He flushed a bit. "I, uh...it also has a side-effect if I generate too much, and I won't be much use if that happens."

Kei held his silence for a moment, then grunted. "I'm Kei Hojo. My Quirk lets me devour and grow crystalline substances."

Kaminari's smile seemed to solidify a bit. "Oh, that's cool! So, does that mean all your armour is crystals?"

Kei nodded. "Carbon fiber underlayer for general protection, then photonic crystal dust, then diamond." The overall effect was certainly something; the underlayer wasn't even visible beneath the two layers that had been added, the interior one looking a lot like sand and the outer layer with its characteristic sparkle.

Kaminari's eyes bugged out. "D...d…" He raised a slightly shaking finger. "You mean that entire suit of armour is diamond?!"

Kei glanced down at himself. Diamond wasn't suited to being armour, not really, but it was totally insoluble to acid, so he'd grown an outer layer of it on struts a centimetre from his carbon armour, the plates scaled to match the underlayer and keep his mobility from being cut too drastically. Then, the empty space between the two had been filled with photonic crystals that he allowed to break down into powder, creating a highly effective layer of insulation.

He had already started to sweat after his run up the stairs.

"The outer layer is," he replied simply. "I wouldn't think much about the cost if I were you; the diamond market made products formed from Quirks like mine illegal goods years ago." Well, without special licenses and permissions out the ass, anyway – though of course, if you were associated with one of those businesses, such difficulties suddenly became much more easily overcome.

"Okay…" Kaminari muttered, shaking his head a bit to clear it. "Okay. So, a plan." The blond scratched his head looking at the massive modelled missile. "All Might said we could hide this thing, but it doesn't look like it could even go through the door…"

"...It doesn't necessarily have to," Kei commented.

Kaminari turned to him. "Have you got a plan, Kei?"

"Hojo, if you don't mind," Kei corrected him. "But as it happens I do." The taller teen turned to regard Kaminari. "I happen to know a thing or two about Ashido and Todoroki; suffice to say, if we get into a siege situation with them, we lose. End of story."

Kaminari blanched. "Oh…" He shook himself again. "Okay, so if we can't just stay in here to defend...then we take the fight to them?"

Kei allowed himself a grin, and Kaminari swallowed. "Well...you're half right."

-x-x-x-

"Five minutes have passed! The Hero team may now enter the building!"

All Might's voice rang in Kei's ear, and he grunted. "Kaminari, it's beginning." Beside Kei's now helmet-covered ear, the blond in question took a deep breath. "Ready?"

"Yeah..." Kaminari declared shakily from his perch on Kei's back. A moment later, he coughed, and said it again, more firmly. "I mean, yep!"

Kei nodded in acknowledgement, then stopped talking and waited.

A few seconds passed...and then it came.

The cold swept over them like a tidal wave. Full-blown ice swallowed the walls, the ceiling, the floor, every riveted metal plate and every overhead light and pipe. The entire building groaned as the metal suddenly contracted, though it was barely audible over the plastic-shrieking of the forming ice.

Kaminari cursed, but he kept it down so Kei didn't glare at him for it.

Both their breaths were immediately visible in the air, and Kei felt the chilling bite of it in his throat...but with the insulation layer of his armour, he kept his body heat more or less to himself, and with the design of his helmet the lenses didn't fog up. Kaminari wasn't quite so lucky, but since he wasn't touching any of the surfaces that had been so abruptly frozen, he was much better off than he could have been.

The thick extra layer of diamond that Kei had grown around his feet and calves flaked away into nothingness once the wave had passed, allowing the teen to simply step out of the overlarge ice-moulds of his feet and set his now spiked boots down into icy floor with a crunch.

That was step one complete.

Step two, however, required more waiting.

Kei and Kaminari had familiarised themselves with the building's layout fairly quickly, knowing that the other team would be getting a schematic of the building to study before going in. There were multiple paths to get to the fifth floor...however, there was one that was basically a straight shot.

And it was that one that they were betting Team G would take.

It was a tense couple of minutes in the corridor. They were on the ground floor, beneath the area about a quarter of the way along a corridor on the first floor that led to the staircase. If their bet panned out, then Ashido and Todoroki would walk right over their heads on their path to the fifth floor. Kei had already cut out the roof in the right spot and fixed it back in place with some glass that would definitely shatter if the other team stood on it; the ice shouldn't be thick enough on the floor to interfere with that.

If they were right.

Time ticked by, the only sounds being their breathing and the settling building, and Kei could feel the anxiety climbing up his throat…

Until Kaminari's earpiece, the one they had stuck in 'transmit' mode with some crystal and hidden in the corridor above them, began to pick up voices.

"...place, it's totally got the best strawberry cake in the city!"

"I don't eat cake."

Kei raised his hand as the voices of Ashido and Todoroki grew louder, and he felt Kaminari shift on his back, pressing his hands against Kei's shoulders.

"More of an ice-cream guy, eh? Eh?" Ashido chuckled, and faint liquid sounds began to be picked up, as well as footsteps. "Well, I happen to know a lovely little ice-cream parlour too~"

"I would prefer to get through this test before considering what to do afterwards."

Kei could rather empathise with how very done Todoroki sounded in that moment...but he crushed that empathy.

Distracted prey was just another advantage.

"Well, you said yourself that the test's basically over already, right?" Ashido commented, and as the voices began to sound like they were right beside him, Kei rolled his shoulders one more time and raised his hands. "I mean, you already froze 'em, so what can go wro—?"

And that was about the time they stood on the panel Kei had cut out.

It broke from one side first, the thinner glass there giving way more easily, before snapping on the other side – giving the overall impression of an opening trapdoor. Two figures tumbled down through the space; even if Ashido had been a bit ahead, which it seemed she had, she had grabbed Todoroki as she fell, dragging him down with her.

The two teens landed in a heap in front of Kei, the heavier Todoroki knocking the wind out of Ashido and both of them disoriented, and they looked up just as Kei leaned over and latched a hand down on Todoroki's right shoulder and Ashido's left.

The bands of glittering silvery metal running down the arms of his armour to the palms, leading back up to the shoulders where Kaminari's sparking hands were placed, winked at them.

Then, with a loud crackling sound and a flash of light, Todoroki and Ashido started jerking around as Kaminari tazed them through Kei, who the electricity never touched.

Several seconds of that later, and the two teens below them were too out of it to react when Kaminari handed Kei the roll of capture tape and he wrapped it around the two 'heroes'.

"The exercise is over! Team C, the villains, have captured team G!"

Kei let out a breath he'd been holding since they laid the ambush, straightening up as his helmet broke away from the neck armour and his skin, allowing him to lift it off and look at Kaminari properly. "We won."

Kaminari's face, which was set in a hopeful grin, exploded into a full-on beaming smile. "All right!" he whooped, raising his fists over his head in triumph. "You really called it from the beginning, Hojo! That's some awesome planning man!" He flattened one of his fists and presented the palm to Kei. "High five!"

Kei gave him a dead look. "Get off my back first."

-x-x-x-

The four of them were halfway to the monitor room, after Todoroki unfroze the building, before Kei finally gave in and high fived him.