Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

As Izuku Midoriya forced down a hair on a quiet beach, things were a fair bit louder across town in the Watson household.

Wilbur poked his head out through the floor of Techno and Tommy’s shared room - pitying them for having to get up so early, but still joyous at being able to cause Tommy some annoyance for once. “WAKE UP SLEEPYHEADS,” he bellowed, causing Tommy to jerk suddenly awake while Techno continued snoring soundly.

“Wilburrrrrrrr,” Tommy moaned, laying back down and pulling his pillow over his face. “What time is it?”

Wilbur pulled himself up through the floor and solidified himself to begin repeatedly poking the younger boy in the side, earning a pillow to the face for his troubles. “Time to get a move on and have breakfast. Dad’s gotta fly in to work to help set up today, and you know Mom’s also got to get there early to observe.”

With a drawn-out, dramatic sigh, Tommy rolled out of bed, the thump of his side hitting the wooden floor seeming to wake him up a little. The boy yawned and stretched from his prone position before pulling himself up and stumbling out of the room. Wilbur was almost grateful for his low energy, knowing that he’d be back to his usual hyperactive self within a few minutes.

He walked over to the still-sleeping form of his other brother, and poked him in the nose. Techno merely grumbled in his sleep and rolled over. Wilbur knew that his younger brother was a heavy sleeper, but was still always surprised by just how much his body would do to avoid waking up. Resorting to more drastic measures, Wilbur tugged on a cord they’d rigged up above Techno’s bed, ringing a sizable bell that had been mounted on the ceiling. The metallic noise instantly woke the sleeping teen, who started suddenly and muttered something about ‘members’ before flopping out of bed himself.

Satisfied that both of his siblings would make it downstairs eventually, Wilbur reactivated his Quirk and dropped back through the floor and straight into his seat, where Phil and Kristin had already laid out the family’s set of breakfasts - the only common factor between all their meals being toast. Phil himself had elected to have some leftover fried chicken from the previous night, Kristin and Wilbur had some bacon and fried egg, Techno had an extra-large helping of blood sausage, and Tommy was assumedly just going to cook up something for himself - his appetite for various foods being in near-constant flux, which wasn’t a major issue thanks to his Quirk.

Phil excused himself as soon as he’d finished his chicken and packed his plate away, giving Kristin a kiss on the forehead and wishing his two younger children good luck before pulling open the window and jumping out, his strong black-feathered wings picking up the morning breeze. Techno had only just arrived downstairs at the time, but utterly devoured his blood sausage before Tommy had even finished picking out some ham and cheese for a sandwich.

As they finished, the trio of teenagers made their way upstairs one at a time to change for the day - Wilbur slipping into comfortable slacks and a simple t-shirt, Techno and Tommy both making sure to wear something more heavy-duty - boots, jeans, and thick jackets. They would both be participating in the U.A. Hero Course practical, as well as writing the general academic exam - while Wilbur, having already been admitted after the recommendations exam two weeks prior, was going to watch.

(Kristin and Phil, both being teachers of U.A’s second years, could only recommend one of their own children for the exam as a result of an anti-nepotism policy at UA - and Wilbur, being the least suited of the trio for open combat, got the spot.)

The car ride to U.A. was largely uneventful, and Wilbur helped Tommy to organise his inventory while Techno and Tommy bickered over who between the two of them would likely get the most points. Wilbur privately thought that they ought to have taken the time to do some last-minute studying for the written exam - while both were native English speakers and surprisingly good at math, their Japanese was still far from fluent: though that went for Wilbur as well, he supposed.

Kristin wished the boys luck, and led Wilbur into the UA building proper while Techno and Tommy queued up for admission to the exam hall. Wilbur was very much excited to see how his brothers would do, but also curious about his soon-to-be yearmates - and, especially, their Quirks. Quirk analysis had long been a hobby of his: his own Quirk, Phantom, wasn’t well-suited for direct combat, so he hoped to make up for it with being able to work around the Quirks of his opponents instead.

Techno breathed an audible sigh of relief when he and Tommy split up to head to their test areas, which were mercifully in different buildings. He loved his younger brother, he really did, but that didn’t stop him from being an annoyance - if a lovable one - at times. Or most of the time.

He sat down at his assigned desk, taking a moment to distance himself from the constant voices in his head that were currently chattering about his odds in the exam. He glanced over to his right, and spotted a tall, anxious-looking split-faced kid around his age muttering to himself, his heterochromatic eyes flickering between two different textbooks.

Techno shrugged internally - he wasn’t terribly stressed about how he’d do, albeit mostly because he’d already resigned himself to not doing spectacularly on the written portion of the exam. The killer combination of ADHD and a Quirk that distracted him with random chatter at all hours of the day had made him a poor fit for regular schooling from day one, and the family's moving to Japan hadn’t helped his prospects.

The examiner came in - Present Mic, the Voice Hero, he noted - and the hall’s crowd of background whispers abruptly shut off, leaving Techno with only the test slapped down on his table to distract him from his voices. The voices had proved very helpful in some respects - notably providing him with a kind of sixth sense in his combat training with Phil, as they alerted him to his surroundings - but none of them, alas, had ever given him any advice that proved helpful to his studies. He took a deep breath and opened the paper.

In the next building over, Tommy took his seat next to a similarly excitable-looking boy with transparent pale-grey wings on his back. Pulling a textbook and stationery bag out of his inventory, he chewed at a pen for a few minutes and stared at the book’s cover before giving up any last-minute studying and instead turning to his neighbour - who, upon closer inspection, had yellow streaks through his black hair, and a pair of similarly-colored antenna near his fringe.

Wilbur had been training Tommy in Quirk analysis, finding that teaching was a big help in learning the subject himself. According to his expert deductions, his neighbour likely had a bee-related Quirk - as indicated by the yellow-and-black colour scheme, insect-like wings on his back, and antennae.

Nodding to himself at his analysis, Tommy turned his attention elsewhere, his eyes landing on another boy - this one with dark green hair bordering on black, who was staring at his open palm with a determined expression on his face. Looking up at the examiner (some woman in a skintight bodysuit who Tommy didn’t recognise), the greenette clenched his fist dramatically as he set his jaw in a somehow even-more-determined expression. Tommy had no idea what was going through his head.

Slipping his book back into his inventory, Tommy used the reading time of the exam to sort through it again - making sure that all his gear was where he needed it to be for the upcoming practical. His primary weapon sat ready for use - he was sure he’d be able to get a pretty high score with it, though he’d have to make sure to avoid any collateral damage.

Pushing his future combat plans aside for now, Tommy popped the cap off his pen and readied himself to start writing.

Technoblade was mentally exhausted by the end of the written exam - and not because the questions themselves had been particularly awful. He was pretty good at math, and the English came naturally to him - as expected, it was the Japanese which was his big Achilles’ heel. He was pretty sure he’d actually done decently, which came as a surprise to him - it was possible that U.A. selected more for combat prowess than academic strength in its general heroics course applicants, and made the written exam easy as a result.

Regardless, his performance had not been helped by the fact that his voices had started yelling ‘E’ repeatedly in his head midway through the exam - growing restless at the prospect of imminent combat. For one reason or another, his voices were absolute adrenaline junkies most of the time, and loved combat for that reason (well, that and the prospect of spilled blood). Indeed, the familiar chant of “blood for the blood god” had already started in his head as he stood up from his desk, stretched, and headed for the atrium to hear the rules for the combat test. He spotted Tommy across the hall, talking animatedly in Japanese with a slightly shorter but equally energetic child with a bee quirk. Techno noticed that his split-faced neighbour was walking beside him, and figured he might as well strike up conversation while they had the chance.

Switching to Japanese, he greeted the taller teen. “Hello there, fellow student. How are you doing?” Running the words back in his brain, he winced as he realised how overly formal and stilted he sounded. Regardless, his companion paused in his muttering and tilted his head at him, even as they kept walking.

“H-Hello. Uhhhh… hi. I’m fine. Kinda worried about the combat test, but I’ve also applied for General Studies anyway so hopefully I’ll still get into U.A. that way. Why do you ask?” Techno envied the fact that the taller boy was still so much smoother than him at speaking despite his rambling and occasional stutter. “Ehhhh, just making conversation. I figured it might be nice to meet some of my potential future classmates.”

The dual-coloured teen laughed, slightly nervously. “Yeah, I suppose so. I’m not very good with… with people, normally. Oh, uh, I’m Ranbo Ugokuparu, what’s your name?”

Techno sighed internally, as he pulled his rarely-used official Japanese name from the depths of his mind. “Chinokami Denpunoka,” he responded, “but you can call me Technoblade. Everyone does.”

Ranbo - Ugokuparu, he reminded himself - simply nodded. “I assume you’re not originally from Japan?”

Techno chortled. “Yeah, I’m from America, originally. I assume it’s pretty obvious, with the accent and awkward phrasing and all.”

Ugokuparu tilted his head at him again. “I assume your parents are Japanese? I’ve never met an American who doesn’t have an English name before.”

Techno sighed, externally this time. “Nope. My adoptive parents were English originally. They adopted my older brother Wilbur as a baby, moved to America for five years or so, adopted me while living there, then we moved back to Britain and they ended up adopting my younger brother Tommy there. Then we all moved to Japan about three years ago.”

Ugokuparu nodded as Techno paused for a moment. “How old are your brothers?”

“Wilbur’s a year older and Tommy a year younger, but Wilbur started late and Tommy started early, so we ended up in the same school year, which was convenient,” Techno replied.

The taller teen nodded again. “Anyway, sorry, you were talking about your name.”

“Yeah,” Techno responded. “So, for some reason, Japan requires both a first and a last name for identity documents. I’d just always known myself as Technoblade when I got adopted, and nobody knows who my birth parents were, so I couldn’t just take on their surname like Wilbur and Tommy did.”

Spying Ugokuparu’s head beginning to tilt in a now-familiar fashion, Techno preempted his question. “Oh, yeah, and our adoptive parents are pro heroes, so we figured it was safer for us not to be easily identifiable as their children by surname alone.”

Seemingly satisfied, Ugokuparu’s head resumed its usual inclination - and just in time for the student group’s arrival at the atrium. “See you around, then, I guess,” Ugokuparu greeted awkwardly.

Techno inclined his head in a small nod. “See you, and good luck on the practical.” They stared awkwardly at each other for another few seconds before both turning away and finding their own seats.

Tommy took his seat, which fortuitously enough was right next to the person he was rapidly beginning to consider his official new best friend. Tubbo Ashido was bright, smiley, energetic, and didn’t seem to mind Tommy’s still-slightly-clumsy grasp of Japanese - and was more than happy for them to use first names, which made the British child very happy indeed.

“So, Tommy, I just realised you haven’t told me almost anything about your Quirk! What’s it called, what can it do?” Tubbo asked him as he sat down.

Tommy grinned. “Well, I think it might be easier to show than tell. Take a look here,” he said, before drawing on his Quirk and rapidly swapping between the items in his left hand’s hotbar. A sword, an axe, a small assortment of bottles, a loaf of bread, a bucket of water, a red-and-white cube shape, and a crossbow loaded with a similarly red-and-white projectile all flickered into and out of his hand in rapid succession.

Tubbo gasped. “Wow, that was quick. So you can swap between stuff rapidly? Do you have all that stuff on you, or is it some sort of extradimensional space? I’d be pretty surprised if you had room to stuff a crossbow down your trousers.”

Tommy snorted in amusement. “Right you are, big man. Yeah, my Quirk is called Minecraft, and it’s got a bunch of extradimensional space aspects to it. It’s based on this old game from the pre-Quirk era, apparently. I’ve played it, and it’s pretty good - the fact that it was popular enough to get a wiki that survived the Quirk Upheaval was pretty helpful, since that basically gave me a guide on everything it can do right away.”

“Wow,” Tubbo smiled. “That sounds really useful! Fortunately, my Quirk, Acidic Bumblebee, is mostly pretty easy to understand, so it's not super difficult to use - flying took some getting used to, but it’s basically just that and stinging stuff. Fortunately, my mum’s Acid Quirk merged pretty neatly with my dad’s Bumblebee Quirk, so my stinger can make either poison or acid, which is gonna be helpful against these robots. It’s not exactly as strong as my sister’s acid, but it should be plenty.”

Tommy was about to ask about Tubbo’s sister - or, more specifically, her Quirk - but they were interrupted by Present Mic beginning the presentation, which Tommy deemed sufficiently important to listen to with his full attention.

Techno’s voices were eerily quiet as he took his seat. He was able to listen fairly attentively as a result, partly thanks to Present Mic mostly getting straight to the point once his initial call-and-response hype tactic failed. As Present Mic explained the three main types of robots, however, a vaguely familiar blue-haired examinee raised his hand to complain about a fourth type of robot not having been explained.

The voices began to murmur quietly as Blue paused, turning to a figure sitting behind himself. “You there, with the notebook! Your muttering is distracting other examinees. Take this event seriously or leave - you disrespect the halls of this esteemed school!” Techno’s eyes were drawn to the boy in question, and the voices’ muttering grew louder still. He could have sworn he discerned the words main character through the mutters, but before he could stop to think about it Present Mic had started speaking again and Techno switched his attention to the explanation of the zero-pointer.

Once Present Mic was finished, Techno pushed his way through the crowd to reach Tommy, who waved him over with a smile. “Ayup, Blade,” he greeted in English. Switching back to Japanese, he introduced his companion. “This is Tubbo. Tubbo, this is Technoblade, my older brother who I was telling you about earlier.” The boy in question smiled and began to reply, but was interrupted by Techno.

“I’m sorry for being so hasty, Tubbo-san, but Tommy, I really need you to give me those bottles before we split up. I’m pretty sure we’ve got different combat areas, and I really don’t feel like going in without my support items after we did all that paperwork for them.” Tommy’s eyes opened wide in realisation.

“Ah, of course, big man, of course, like I’d forget something as important as that,” he rambled, laughing nervously. He pulled two bottles out of his inventory - one filled with red liquid, the other with a dull grey. “I think we’re splitting up, like, right now, so here you go, Blade. C’mon Tubbo, we can talk with Techno later.” Tubbo nodded, and the three wished each other good luck before splitting up for their respective battle arenas.

Phil watched his two younger sons via the camera feeds as they went their separate ways. He was happy that they seemed to already be making friends - and, if his intuition was correct, Tubbo Ashido would more than likely make it into the Hero Course alongside his twin sister Mina. Ranbo Ugokuparu, however, he wasn’t very optimistic about. The kid’s Quirk was definitely useful, offering excellent mobility and thus enhancing combat potential, but the bicoloured teen was too lanky to be able to damage many robots without some sort of engineered assistance.

Wilbur, sitting next to him (having been allowed to watch as an observer), had similar thoughts. Ugokuparu could have had a shot at getting in via the Recommendations exam, especially since a teleportation ability would make the obstacle race far easier, but he had evidently not been recommended for it as Wilbur hadn’t seen him there.

The recommendation exam was often wasted in Wilbur’s eyes - it was the only chance for those with non-physical Quirks to make it into the Hero Course without having to excel at the Sports Festival, an event where one bout of bad luck could drop you out before even reaching the tournament stage. Having two such spots be taken by the crazy-powerful son of Endeavour and a girl with the ability to pull cannons out of her arms seemed stupid - if those two had gotten in with the usual exam, two more non-physical-Quirk users could have taken their places.

He cast his eye over the sea of people near Tommy. He spotted Tenya Iida, brother of noted pro hero Ingenium, yelling at some small green-haired kid for some reason. Tommy himself was talking earnestly with Tubbo Ashido and a pair of green-skinned students, while behind them a blond guy pulled up the hood of his green jacket.

Switching over to the other battle centre, he saw Techno standing off to the side, talking with a much-more-energetic-looking horned girl. He pulled up her file on the computer sitting in front of him. Pony Tsunotori, he read, born in America, native English speaker. That explained why she’d apparently noticed Techno specifically. The two were quickly joined by another, much fluffier person - Caroline Shephard, the computer helpfully appended - who joined their conversation. Wilbur assumed they were probably speaking English, which explained why Techno looked as close to relaxed as he ever was around total strangers.

Tommy was, all things considered, pretty surprised by the sheer number of non-Japanese natives he’d seen at the Entrance Exam. Obviously, he and his siblings were among that number, but the two green-skinned gentlemen he was currently talking with were as well.

Charlie Dalgleish and Sam Nobel looked fairly similar at a distance, but up close it was clear that while Sam simply had patchy green skin, Charlie’s was slightly transparent and shiny - a side-effect of his Quirk, Slimebody, which apparently let him split like a starfish into multiple clones or liquefy and harden to gunk up machinery. Sam, meanwhile, had the intimidating-sounding Self-Destruct, which released a powerful radial explosion but was very physically taxing to use repeatedly. Nonetheless, the four were all fairly confident that they’d all be able to get into the Hero Course - which made sense. After all, Tommy reasoned, if they hadn’t thought as much they’d never have applied.

As they spoke, the familiar voice of Present Mic suddenly rang out, catching them all by surprise. “Start!” The examinees froze for the most part, prompting Mic to add “There are no countdowns in real life! Get moving!” Tubbo immediately buzzed his wings and took off, Charlie split himself into a few smaller copies to begin dashing through the crowd, and Sam elected to simply push through instead of trying to explode a path for himself.

As for Tommy, he spun his right hand’s hotbar to select his fishing rod, and swung it forwards to wrap the hook and some line around a lightpost. Flicking his wrist, he launched himself up and pulled himself forward even as he pulled out a bottle of pale grey liquid from his inventory and chugged it. The Speed potion tasted like Coke as it went down, and Tommy’s limbs were suddenly filled with seemingly boundless energy. He pulled out a greenish potion and splashed it on the lamp-post as he approached it, getting close to the full effect of his Jump Boost potion just in time to launch himself off the post and towards the robot-filled streets.

As he soared through the air towards a cluster of one- and two-pointers dead ahead, he opened up his inventory and hastily equipped his armour. While the game had diamond armour and an enchanting system, a critical deficit of diamond gems in his life had prevented Tommy from making any armour better than iron or enchanting his existing set of armour. Regardless, it would hopefully do against the testing robots.

He swapped to the firework-loaded crossbow in his left hand and fired it straight down as he passed overhead, the telltale clang of metal telling him that he’d taken out at least a few of his targets. Not even looking back, he swapped over to his most powerful weapon and the tool needed to activate it. With a whoop of adrenaline, Tommy landed from his jump and leapt towards another group of robots, a stack of TNT and a flint-and-steel ready in his hands to drop upon the bots from above.

In a near-identical arena, Techno had reacted slightly faster than his compatriots, pulling out the red bottle and taking a big sip before crouching down and leaping away over the crowd - his jump leaving small dents in the concrete. The voices in his head cheered at the metallic taste of well-preserved blood, and he activated his Quirk, increasing his strength tenfold. He grabbed a one-pointer’s laser cannon and ripped it clean off, before spearing the disarmed bot with the barrel and pulling off a body panel to use as an improvised weapon.

Behind him, the fluffy girl - Cara, as she had introduced herself - launched herself into the air as well, the fluffy wool on her back growing rapidly and pushing her forwards and upwards. For her part, Pony pulled a pair of horns off her head and grabbed them tightly, before telekinetically launching the horns - and herself along with them - over the crowd and towards the robots. Techno spared them a glance as he acquainted himself with the weight of his new weapon - he was glad to see that his fellow Americans would hopefully have a good chance of making it through.

Techno made sure to check that Tommy’s Weakness splash potion was still firmly on his hip, just in case of a Quirk emergency - the potion acted as both a minor muscle relaxant and a potent Quirk suppressant, which would prove useful if Techno were to lose control of his Quirk. For now, though, he allowed himself to succumb to the adrenaline rush of battle, the blood singing through his veins as he flung his makeshift weapon to knock the head off of a three-pointer, which he intercepted mid-air with a kick to blow it through a pair of approaching one-pointers.

His voices were filling his head with a familiar mixture of commentary (Nice kick! Solid throw!), advice (Two-pointer coming up on your left. Jump right, laser shot.), and random screaming (BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! TECHNOBLADE NEVER DIES! E! POGCHAMP!), the former and latter of which he tried to tune out. But, as much as he disliked the voices for their constantly distracting him most of the time, it was pretty helpful having the voiced equivalent of eyes in the back of his head - and he swore they could see around corners sometimes.

He noticed a three-pointer bearing down on a familiar-looking green-haired kid, and he smashed through it and flashed the kid a hopefully-not-terrifying-looking smile before jumping off. His voices muttered about main characters for a second again, but he had no time to think as he kicked the head off of another two-pointer and took another swig from his blood bottle. Shit, he was chewing through his supply alarmingly fast, but he needed to get as many points as possible before everyone else took all the good robots - so, he soldiered on.

Tommy, meanwhile, was having the time of his life. His training with Phil hadn’t exactly been aimed at preparing him for jumping around like a rabbit on crack and flinging meter-cubes of high explosive at robots, but dear God the tactic was working well enough anyway. He had poured his full focus into every single one of the potions he was using now earlier that morning, leaving him with a massive headache - but if it meant he could brew them powerful enough to jump three stories in the air, he’d have to do so more regularly.

Frankly, the hardest part was ensuring that he didn’t do too much collateral damage, specifically to his fellow examinees - he’d had to pull three separate people out of the way of explosions with his fishing rod, and he wasn’t convinced that his rod skills would continue to hold up once post-potion fatigue set in. It generally upset his stomach to take in more than a few potions in a short period of time, and he’d already taken second doses of Speed and Jump Boost to maintain his momentum - the more potent brews he’d made for today not having very long-lasting effects.

He heard the three-minute warning sound out just before he ran out of his second dose of potions, and used his fishing rod to pull himself up to the roof of one of the buildings to take a breather. He had another round of potions brewed, which he’d prefer to use now instead of letting them grow stale and lose their potency - he had learned through experimentation that more powerful potions lost their strength after a few days, while the weaker-but-longer-lasting versions could go weeks before becoming inert.

More importantly, however, he was almost out of TNT - he’d brought one full stack of sixty-four to this event, having grabbed a ton of sand from Dagobah Beach and cannibalised some of the fireworks Phil and Kristin had bought him as crossbow ammunition for gunpowder. His last remaining TNT blocks were his most potent, crafted with a far larger pinch of gunpowder per slot - he hadn’t wanted to collapse any buildings, so he’d been reluctant to use it.

By his estimation, he’d already earned a good seventy or eighty points anyway - more than enough to get in - so he simply laid down on the smooth roof, and had just started to pull out his ender chest to put away his explosive weapons when he heard a thunderous crash. The entire building shook, and Tommy darted to his feet, water bucket in hand in case he needed to take any long falls.

He saw the titanic form of the zero-pointer that Present Mic had been talking about rise from a cloud of smoke, knocking into a replica apartment building as it did so. A chunk of the building broke off and fell to the ground. Tommy gasped as he saw Tubbo narrowly dodge the debris, even as his stinger extended to pump acid into a two-pointer. Tommy saw another piece of debris fall off the building as the zero-pointer took a gargantuan step - this chunk flattening the two-pointer to the ground. Tommy saw his friend shout in surprise and begin to fly away, only to be stopped by his stinger, still embedded in the robot’s corpse. Tommy saw the issue - the two-pointer’s internals had caught the tip of the stinger as the robot was crushed, and had effectively stuck Tubbo in place!

Tommy set his jaw and pulled out a trio of potions - his very strongest Strength, Speed, and Jump Boost - and slammed them on the ground at his feet before dropping off the side of the building, kicking himself forward toward Tubbo as he did so. He barely brought his water bucket out in time to slap it on the ground below him, instantly spawning a cube of water that he slammed into - his quirk’s odd water mechanics cancelling out the entirety of his momentum and safely bringing him to a stop. The zero-pointer took another step forward towards the duo, now only one step away from crushing them both. Tommy turned to Tubbo. “I’m going to get you free, big T. Once that’s done, I want you to fly away, yeah?” Tubbo nodded shakily, almost paralysed in fear. Tommy pulled out a few blocks of his strongest material - obsidian, mined from a volcanic crater on a school field trip - and built a hasty one-block-wide roof over their heads before turning to the crushed robot.

He was grateful for the Quirk-enhancing aspects of his Strength potion as he reached out and grabbed it. He had learned previously that inserting large objects into his inventory was a very taxing process, but with the buzz of brewed power flowing through his veins he felt like his current task was actually possible. He pulled open his inventory menu right in front of himself, and maneuvered his body around the crushed robot to make its centre match up with an empty slot. With a mighty effort, his Quirk rationalised the robot as being inside the slot, and the bot suddenly disappeared from Tommy’s hands, an icon representing it appearing inside Tommy’s inventory.

Tommy waved Tubbo off, who hastily obliged and buzzed away as Tommy felt like his head was splitting open from the effort of holding such a large single object inside his Quirk. Pushing through the pain, he pulled out his fishing rod in his left hand and used it to accelerate a massive leap towards the top of the zero-pointer, even as he downed a Slowfall potion with his right. His body was decidedly unhappy with the mix of four strong potions in his system, and made its displeasure known by threatening to throw up the offending liquids entirely. Tommy resisted the urge, swapping to his final blocks of TNT as he launched the fishing rod again and pulled himself up once more. He reached the zero-pointer’s neck (ejecting the disabled robot from his inventory, now that Tubbo had gotten out of the way), and figured it to be as good a spot as any for some impromptu demolition.

He pulled a few slimeballs out from his inventory, throwing them onto the panels of the zero-pointer's neck before swapping back to his TNT and shoving the most potent of the explosive cubes firmly onto the sticky green matter now coating the metal. Tommy put away his fishing rod, holding onto one of the cubes instead, as he swapped his flint-and-steel over to his left hand. Taking a deep breath, he struck the fire-starting tool against the TNT, which hissed in characteristic fashion as its internal fuse lit. Tommy braced his legs against the lit block of explosive and jumped, catapulting his body away from the neck of the zero-pointer as he pulled out his shield in his offhand and braced mid-air for the imminent explosion.

KA-BOOOM.

Tommy instantly blacked out.

Technoblade heard a powerful explosion from an adjacent battle zone, and hoped it was Tommy’s TNT rather than anything too fatal. As much of an airhead as his little brother was, Techno knew that Tommy could generally be relied upon to be sensible in the handling of explosives - God knew that Phil and Kristin had lectured him for literal hours before allowing him to craft his first block of TNT.

Techno chugged the last of the blood in his bottle and turned to survey his work. The street was littered with junked robots, and Techno was fairly confident that he’d be getting into the Hero Course, but he was pretty much out of blood. The voices were much quieter than usual, having been sated for a while by the rush of combat. His Weakness potion remained mercifully unused; while he had effectively given into his bloodlust once or twice, he had only done so without any people in sight, and had successfully snapped himself back to reality as soon as he spotted anyone.

He heard a scream from an adjoining street, and poked his head around the corner to see a horrifying sight.

He had seen the zero-pointer emerge from a cluster of buildings, but hadn’t realised how quickly it had stomped across the city to this side. He spotted someone with a bob of brown hair pinned down underneath some rubble as the zero-pointer stepped forward, mere seconds away from crushing the poor kid.

He ran forward, hesitating for a few crucial seconds as he realised that he was going to be firmly entrenched by bloodlust if he expended his own blood trying to help. He spotted Ranbo across the street, similarly hesitating as he pulled off a black sphere from his skin and rolled it around his fingers, eyes darting from the trapped examinee to the zero-pointer and back. With another massive step, the zero-pointer’s foot bore down on the girl, even as a green flash leapt up to its face. The robot finished its step a split-second too soon, crushing the debris and the examinee inside, moments before a titanic blow dented in its face and sent it toppling backwards. Techno gasped in shock, as a boy in a purple hoodie ran up next to him and grabbed him. “What’s your name?”, the kid shouted. Techno stared at him, stunned and confused, muttering “Tech...Technoblade.” He shook the kid off, staring at the scene of the tragedy. He had been too late-

He ran forward, and a vaguely-familiar kid in a purple hoodie appeared suddenly beside him, his nose bleeding. “Technoblade,” he said, “trust me. Help her.” Techno was stunned into action by the sincerity in his eyes, his legs beginning to move before he asked them to and carrying him towards the debris with superhuman speed. He felt his Quirk start to absorb his own blood, and he ran faster than he had ever run before to the trapped teen’s side. Slipping his hands underneath the piece of rubble, he flung the stone upwards before darting in, grabbing her by the waist, and dashing off less than a second before the stone was crushed by the descending foot of the zero-pointer. His voices filled his head once again, a mixture of cheers and screams as they demanded fresh blood to replace his expended supply. He collapsed to the ground fifty meters back from the metallic titan, just in time to see a green flash leap up to the zero-pointer’s face, moments before a titanic blow dented it in and sent the colossus toppling over backwards.

Techno felt his canines extend as his Quirk lit his eyes a predatory red, and began to regard the girl clutched in his arms. She was weak, and it would be so easy to sink his teeth into her neck and begin sucking out her lifeblood, strengthening the Blood God once again to strike anew. He began to move his hand towards his hip even as he bared his teeth and struck like a serpent at the girl’s neck, his fangs grazing her skin before his hand reached its destination and he shattered the bottle of the Weakness potion in his fist.

The voices, previously reaching up to a glorious crescendo, instantly cut out as the potent Quirk suppressant made its way through Techno’s skin; and the Blood God slumped over, mercifully unconscious.

Wilbur looked on in horror as his little brother was caught by the explosion that blew the head clean off the zero-pointer, his shield bashing into his skull and seemingly knocking him unconscious. He was launched almost horizontally, some unseen force - likely a Slowfall potion, he reasoned - keeping his vertical speed at a constant maximum. Tommy slammed back-first into the wall of one of the taller buildings and began floating gently down to the ground.

The observation room was stunned into silence, replacing the previous low chatter about rescue points. Principal Nezu quietly spoke into a microphone, ordering Recovery Girl to heal the boy of his injuries in case there was any internal damage. Phil pulled open a window and leapt out, his wings snapping open to carry him away - assumedly going to go help Tommy to safety personally.

Mere seconds later, the room filled with gasps of horror as a zero-pointer in another arena stepped on a pile of rubble in which a girl was caught, surely crushing her to death- Mere moments later, the room filled with gasps as Wilbur spotted more action on another monitor. He saw Technoblade dash forward almost faster than he could track, tossing aside a piece of rubble which a girl had been trapped under before grabbing her by the waist and launching away moments before the zero-pointers’ foot slammed down on the pile of debris where she had been a split-second before. Wilbur watched his brother carefully, seeing the familiar red-eyed rage of bloodlust overtake him for a second just before he crushed a bottle on his belt and instantly slumped. Wilbur breathed a sigh of relief - they hadn’t forgotten Techno’s Weakness potion.

Wilbur knew, however, that Techno’s situation was truly dire - he must have expended a scary amount of blood in order to move that fast, and his unconsciousness was likely attributable to shock and anemia from his body’s blood supply suddenly dropping. Wilbur ran for the wall closest to Techno’s test area, yelling “Techno needs blood and medical attention!” before activating his Quirk and phasing through the wall, dropping to the ground on the other side with a rough roll.

He sprinted directly for the battle site, toggling on his Quirk to run straight through the few hills and many trees between the office and the arena, quickly arriving at Techno’s side. The medical bots had already arrived, as well as a few medical personnel. The girl Techno had saved - Ochako Uraraka, he recalled - was sitting in stunned silence, and Wilbur noticed a pair of telltale light scratches on her neck. Techno had apparently stopped himself just in time.

Wilbur arrived at the medtech’s side and started talking in rapid Japanese. “Hey, sorry to interrupt, I’m his brother. He needs blood, urgently - his Quirk absorbs blood for physical strength, and he overstretched his own blood supply. He’s a universal acceptor and immune to all blood-transmitted diseases, and I consent to draining my blood directly into him if there isn’t any immediately available.”

The medtech glanced at him and nodded, not willing to spare a second of hesitation with Techno’s life seemingly on the line. He started jabbering orders to his team and the robots, though Wilbur lost track of the words as he noticed that Technoblade’s skin was worryingly pale. The tech wiped a patch of skin with an alcohol swab, then inserted a needle attached to a tube into a vein on Techno’s arm - hooking the tube up to a small cubic device. He then did the same to Wilbur - who ignored the sting of pain as the needle went in - and stuck the tube to the other end of the device. Flicking a switch on the cube, Wilbur felt the bizarre feeling of his blood being sucked up through the tube, and saw it flowing straight into Techno’s arm.

The medtech counted out one pint of blood before disengaging the device, unplugging Wilbur’s tube and replacing it with one connected to a blood bag from a newly-arrived ambulance. Wilbur felt slightly lightheaded, but he was happy to see some colour returning to Techno’s face. Most people, he knew, would have died quickly if they lost as much blood as Techno surely had - fortunately, his brother’s Quirk also made his blood more red-cell-rich and thus much more efficient at carrying oxygen, meaning he could survive with less than most people.

He turned around to see a trio of people staring at him in a mixture of shock and relief - Uraraka, Ugokuparu, and an American-looking kid in a purple hoodie who he’d seen walk up to Techno just before the rescue. Wilbur gave them a nod of recognition and approached them.

“Hey guys,” he said. Uraraka spoke first, still wearing a shocked expression.

“He’s...your brother?” she asked.

Wilbur shrugged awkwardly. “Yup. I’m glad to see he was able to get you out of there, at least. It looked like something went wrong in the zero-pointer’s systems - they’re apparently designed to stop well short of killing anybody, and it looked like you were pretty much...well.”

Purple Hoodie interjected. “Fucked,” he completed. “You were fucked. I saw it. You died if he didn’t save you.”

The others turned to him in surprise, and Wilbur ran the phrasing back in his head. “Don’t you mean she would have died if Techno hadn’t saved her?”

The other teen shook his head. “Nope. She did die.” The others looked only more confused, so he shook his head and spoke again. “I should probably introduce myself. I’m Karl Jacobs. My Quirk is called Timestrange - weird name, I know, but Rewind was already taken and it’s a reference in two separate ways. Anyway, it lets me rewind time for everything but myself.” He turned to Uraraka. “I saw that zero-pointer crush you, rewound time, and managed to warn Pink Hair Guy” - he nodded at the unconscious Techno - “to grab you. Full credit to him, of course - I was just the messenger.”

Uraraka looked like she might throw up, while Ugokuparu just looked dejected. “I… I could have tried to help,” the split-faced teen muttered. “I had a pearl, I could have jumped in and tried… I dunno, something…” He broke off, looking Uraraka in the eyes. “I’m so sorry I didn’t try to save you.” With that, he turned and walked slowly away, Uraraka too stunned to do anything but open her mouth in an aborted attempt at a response.

Karl sighed and gave Wilbur a pat on the shoulder. “Give Pink Hair Guy my wishes for a speedy recovery. I’m gonna go talk to Two-Face before he gives up on heroism or something.” Turning away as well, Karl left Wilbur and Uraraka behind, jogging to catch up to Ugokuparu and start talking quietly with him as they walked.

Uraraka watched the pair walk away for a moment before turning back to Wilbur. “I should go talk to the organisers and ask if I can give your brother some of my points. Jacobs-kun too, actually. They both...saved my life, I guess.” She looked to the crowd of medtechs still surrounding Technoblade, who was being loaded onto a stretcher. “I’m sorry your brother got hurt trying to save me. I felt so hopeless seeing that foot come down, and suddenly he was there pulling me out. I hope he gets into the hero course. He’s definitely a hero to me.” She began to smile near the end of her speech, even as her hands traced over the imprints from Techno’s fangs.

Wilbur shook his head. “Don’t be sorry to me, or to Techno. It isn’t your fault the robots malfunctioned like that. You were never supposed to be in any real danger. Sorry about the whole...teeth thing, by the way. Techno’s Qui-” he started, but was cut off by Uraraka raising a hand in objection.

“Don’t worry about that. It’s just a cut, it’ll heal. He saved my life, and he stopped himself from losing control afterwards. I’m serious when I say I don’t dislike him for it at all.” She flashed him a radiant smile. “I hope I can see you and your brother at the beginning of the year...wait I don’t know your name, and I haven’t even introduced myself either. How rude of me. I’m Ochako Uraraka, and you are?”

“Wilbur Soot, and don’t worry. You should go get checked out by a medtech yourself, Uraraka-san.” She started to babble a denial, but he continued. “I’m serious. Our dad’s a Pro, and he’s always taught us to seek medical attention after any kind of disaster, even if you don’t think there’s anything wrong, as long as you don’t disrupt the first responders while they’re working on people. Please do it? Techno wouldn’t want to save you and then have you turn out to still be hurt by some sort of internal injury from the impact.”

She considered for a moment, then nodded. “Alright Soot-kun, I’ll go find the school nurse before I leave. Besides, I’ve always wanted Recovery Girl’s autograph.” Satisfied with that, Wilbur bid her farewell and turned back to Techno. The medtech asked if he’d like to accompany Techno to the hospital (given that they were brothers) and Wilbur accepted, climbing into the passenger seat as Techno’s stretcher was loaded into the back. Hopefully Tommy would be able to come along shortly to give Techno an Instant Healing potion - those tended to speed up Techno’s recovery from his blood shortages a fair bit, in his experience.

Tommy was mercifully not visibly bleeding when Phil found him, other than a few scratches along his arms where the remnants of his shattered shield had scraped against his skin. At a glance, he had a fair few splinters in his arms as well, but Phil was most worried about internal damage resulting from Tommy slamming into a wall at high speed - though mercifully the Slowfall potion Tommy had apparently downed before taking on the zero-pointer had stayed active long enough for Tommy to land gently, despite him hurling mid-flight as he lost the ability to consciously suppress his upset stomach’s instincts.

Phil picked the boy up in his arms, flapping hard to compensate for the additional weight. He sent out a telepathic request for aid, glad to see his loyal crow Muninn soar down to land on his shoulder as he struggled to adjust his weight distribution for takeoff. Tell Recovery Girl where I am, he ordered, and Muninn squawked a ‘yes’ in response before flapping off in search of the healing Hero. Phil eventually settled for a bridal carry, which left his back open for his wings to spread fully and launch him into the air with supernatural force. He flapped once, twice, three times more to gain altitude, before adding in some forward motion to begin soaring properly as his wings caught the air.

He’d flown ten blocks in as many seconds when he spotted Recovery Girl barrelling down the street on her usual impromptu transport, a stretcher carried by a pair of medibots. He flapped his way to a soft landing, immediately stepping back to let the Youthful Heroine work her magic.

Planting a kiss to Tommy’s forehead, the boy began glowing faintly as Shuzenji’s Quirk got to work, an audible crack sounding as some internal bone was set back into place. “Help me unstrap his armour, would you dearie? I need to check that his ribs are all back in place - the glasses don’t work so well through metal,” she said, tapping her x-ray glasses to emphasise the point. Phil gladly obliged, both happy to be helping his son and to have something to occupy his shaking hands with.

He was angry in a nonspecific way, not exactly directed at any one person or thing - the robot hadn’t been about to kill anyone, not as far as he could see, though the illusion of a lethal threat had been enough to persuade his son to put himself in mortal danger in order to stop it.

He was absolutely proud of Tommy for doing so much to (as far as the lad knew) save the life of his friend, but at the same time the boy had continued to engage the zero-pointer even past the point of Tubbo’s escape. On top of that, he had drastically overestimated the amount of explosive he needed; though Phil reasoned it was also possible he’d chosen to simply blow his remaining supply without regard for just how powerful his full-strength blasts could be. At any rate, he would go over explosives safety again with Tommy before allowing him to craft any more TNT - certainly any TNT as powerful as the blocks he’d used in that final blast.

They finished unstrapping the armour to reveal Tommy’s characteristic red-and-white shirt, which Phil helped Shuzenji to tug off so she could inspect his ribs and spine. Phil almost fainted in relief when she gave him a thumbs-up, collapsing to the ground as an ambulance arrived to bring Tommy to a proper hospital for any other necessary treatment and surveillance. Kristin arrived with this new group of medtechs, and she and Phil immediately embraced, Phil whispering that Tommy was going to be okay into her ear.

They broke apart after a full minute, tears staining the backs of each of their shirts. Kristin looked him in the eyes, a frown on her face. “I’ve got some bad news, though. It’s Techno.” Phil’s heart leapt to his throat - he had vanished before the end of the exam. Had Techno gotten hurt? Would he be alright? Phil opened his mouth to ask a dozen questions, but Kristin forestalled him with a raised palm. “He’s going to be alright, but he lost a lot of blood overusing his Quirk to save some poor girl from a zero-pointer. Apparently that one was really going to kill someone, Phil.” Tears glistened in her eyes and the two embraced again.

“They’re both so strong - all three of them, really, all so strong.” Phil whispered. Both of his younger sons had apparently saved a life today, and Wilbur had been able to show his powerful instinct for analysis in discussions of the examinees’ Quirks before and during the exam.

Kristin nodded into his shoulder. “After you flew off and we all saw Techno save that girl, Wilbur ran off through the wall to get to him, and apparently he helped the medtechs by explaining Techno’s Quirk and donating blood on the scene before the full ambulance could arrive with more.” Phil hummed into his wife’s shoulder, impressed with Wilbur’s quick thinking.

Shuzenji hobbled up to the pair, poking Phil’s leg gently with her cane. “They’re both on the way to the hospital now. I can give you a lift if you’d like, but I imagine…” she started, as Phil began to pick Kristin up in an identical bridal carry to that he’d used to carry Tommy earlier.

“We’ll find our own transport. Thank you, Shuzenji-sama.”

“Call me Chiyo, dearie. We’re coworkers this year, after all.” With a parting wave, the Watsons rose into the air under Phil’s power, before his dark wings caught an updraft and they soared higher into the sky, over a roof and out of sight.

Chapter Text

The week after the Entrance Exam passed by with a merciful lack of drama for the Watson household. Techno had mercifully suffered no major physical injuries, and returned to his normal self after the hospital’s blood transfusions and a few days’ rest to restore the remainder of his supply - indeed, his only external injury was the cuts on his fingers from crushing his potion bottle. Tommy, meanwhile, had to stay in the hospital for a full two days of observation, which frustrated the boy to no end. Fortunately for him, Tubbo visited for a few hours on both days along with his sister Mina and the rest of the Watson clan, the twins having apparently asked for him at every hospital in the area until finding the one he’d been taken to.

Techno, meanwhile, received a Facebook friend request from Cara Shephard, which served the dual purpose of getting him connected to the rest of the examinees he’d met before the practical and reminding him to actually get around to uninstalling the app at some point. He ended up putting it off just in case it led to other people he actually wanted to talk to contacting him, but did also pressure the rest of the newly-proclaimed “U-A-merican Gang” to make a Discord server instead.

A week after the exam, two disc-shaped packages appeared in the Watsons’ mailbox, and Techno insisted (at the U-Americans’ request) on gathering the family together to open them as a group over a Discord call. Tommy joined in, inviting Tubbo and Mina to do the same.

The seven families eventually agreed to open them in order of surname, which meant the Ashidos went first, starting with Mina. She shrieked in glee when All Might welcomed her to the school’s Class 1-A, hugging Tubbo fiercely. Tubbo was next, and looked dazed with happiness when the Symbol of Peace announced that he had also been accepted into the Hero Course - though the joy was bittersweet when it was revealed that he would be in class 1-B, separated from his sister. Nonetheless, the Ashido twins were very happy that they’d be in the same course - Tubbo vowing to surpass his sister, as she had beaten him by one point to take 20th place, Tubbo placing 21st.

Charlie was next, though he approached his package with much more trepidation. “I kinda lost count of how many machines I gooped up, so I’m not sure if I’m gonna be able to slime right on into the Hero Course - but there’s always the Sports Festival if I only get into Gen Ed.” With that, he opened up his message, splitting in two to high-five himself when All Might announced that he had made it into Class 1-B, placed 32nd overall out of the 36 examinees.

Karl was next. He’d only managed to score five villain points, all of which were from finishing off a two- and three-pointer that some kid who’d welded them together hadn’t killed properly. However, a clip was played of Ochako Uraraka going up to the Present Mic’s office and asking to split her points between Karl and Techno, before the Voice Hero told her about the rescue points system and asked for an elaboration on how Karl had saved her.

Her explanation shocked some of the watching parents, though Phil and Kristin simply stared at each other meaningfully for a few seconds. Karl’s dad patted him on the shoulder. The clip ended, and All Might’s voice rang out again. “You earned fifty rescue points for this heroic effort, landing you in a shared tenth place! Well done, young man!” Karl sighed with relief, his parents hugging him tightly as everyone else in the call clapped their congratulations. Karl would also be placed in Class 1-B.

Sam was up next, fairly confident he’d made it in. Nonetheless, his face lit up with a relieved smile when All Might announced that he had made it into 1-B in 13th place.

Cara was next, though she was utterly dejected about her chances - by her count, she’d only earned three points by producing enough wool to fully entomb a three-pointer; after which she’d just walked around aimlessly, pulling low-scoring examinees out of the way of other robots and blinding the bots by wrapping wool around their “eyes”. She fully burst into tears when All Might revealed that her 31 rescue points had landed her in 27th place, earning her a spot in 1-B.

Pony was up next, fiddling with her horns in nervous anticipation as All Might gave yet another identical opening spiel. (Wilbur privately suspected that they’d probably reused the footage of the introduction for at least three of the now-eight recordings they’d seen so far). Pony’s horns fired right off her head as she squealed with happiness when All Might congratulated her on a solid 15th place. Like...well, pretty much everyone else so far, she would be in 1-B.

Finally, it was the turn of the Watson brothers (who were going together despite their wildly differing legal surnames). Techno was up first.

“Young Denpunoka”, All Might started, causing a chorus of confusion from the assembled crowd of callers.

“Guys, chill,” Techno said in English, pausing the video. “Japan has weird rules about legal names, so I had to make up a new one for my ID, so that’s what the school knows me by. Just call me Technoblade, it’s easier.” A chorus of ‘ooooooh’ rang out as he hit play and continued nervously tapping his finger against his thigh through the intro segment before the hero got to the results section.

“You excelled in the primary practical exam, earning 53 villain points. On its own, this would put you in a shared twelfth place.” All Might paused dramatically, during which Tommy clapped Techno on the back.

“However, villain points were not the only aspect of this exam. While you had to use one of your registered support items to avoid exsanguinating her in the aftermath, you did successfully rescue Ochako Uraraka from a zero-pointer that we were later informed may well have been fatal. As such, you were awarded an additional 50 rescue points…” All Might was drowned out by a sudden chorus of cheers, so Techno paused the playback yet again.

“One hundred and three points, is that? Damn, Blade, you might have even beaten me!” Tommy congratulated.

Phil ruffled Techno’s hair. “You know,” Kristin started, “the last time someone got over a hundred points in that exam was when Hawks did it last decade. Before that it was Endeavour, and before that it was All Might himself. All three out of Japan’s Top Three got over a hundred points in their entrance exam.”

Tommy cackled in glee. “Oh, Blade, that’s gotta be so awkward for you, having to live up to that sort of legacy. Wowie, that’s gotta be rough. I can see it now… Number Two hero Technoblade - after me of cou-” Wilbur bonked Tommy over the head with a newspaper, stopping him from rambling on.

“Alright, alright, settle down,” Phil called. “We still don’t even know where he placed! Let’s listen.”

Techno rewound the recording a few seconds, a nervous smile plastered on his face. Over one hundred points? He hadn’t expected to break fifty. His voices filled his head with their own whoops, “pogchamp”s, and “E”s of celebration, before they shushed themselves to hear All Might finish speaking.

“-additional 50 rescue points, putting you in second place overall! Well done, young man! You will join Class 1-B at U.A. High, your official hero academia!”

“WHAT!” the group yelled all at once.

“Over a HUNDRED points, and he isn’t even in first place?” Tubbo wondered. “I wonder who could beat that?”

Nobody in the group had any real ideas. “Tommy, maybe?” asked Techno, though Tommy fully laughed at the idea.

“Ehhhh, I guess we’ll see. C’mon, Tommy, it’s your turn to go,” Techno said.

Tommy obliged, pulling out his own projector disk. All Might’s face appeared, and he once did the same intro spiel explaining the villain scoring process.

“You earned 64 villain points through excellent use of the weapons and tools stockpiled in your Quirk.” A chorus of oohs echoed across the group as All Might paused dramatically again. “However, villain points were not the only metric by which scores were issued.” A clip began to play of Tommy leaping down to remove the crushed two-pointer holding Tubbo down.

“You sacrificed time you could have spent going after more points to rescue Tubbo Ashido from danger at the hands of the zero-pointer, going on to destroy it at great personal risk to yourself.” The clip continued, showing Tommy’s ascent up the zero-pointer and subsequent explosion. “While the zero-pointer was no longer immediately threatening anyone, your actions may nonetheless have saved lives, as we recently discovered that a different zero-pointer might indeed have killed an examinee if not for the timely intervention of other participants. Regardless, for your heroic actions both here and elsewhere in the exam, you received a well-earned 40 rescue points.”

There was a moment of silence as everyone did the mental math, before the call and house exploded with cheers.

“ONE HUNDRED AND FOUR! ONE HUNDRED AND FUCKING FOUR!” Tubbo cheered in a rare moment of foul language.

Techno sighed dramatically. “I knew I should have bet some money it was you who got first. Anyway, well done, Tommy. Not bad. Not bad.”

Tommy himself let out a whoop of excitement. “Holy shit, I need to check something on my phone, one second,” he announced, pulling it out and switching to Google. He exploded in laughter a second later. “I beat Endeavour! I beat fucking Endeavour! Fuck yes!”

The group renewed their cheers: apparently Endeavour had earned a full 103 villain points with not a single rescue point, which also meant that Techno had tied his score.

It took them a full minute to settle down enough to hear All Might announce Tommy’s class.

“You will join U.A’s Hero Class 1-B. Welcome to your hero academia!”

Tommy exploded in cackles, grabbing Techno from behind in a tight hug. “Oh, Blade, it is gonna be hilarious being in the same class as both you and Tubbo! Oh god, this year is going to be fun.”

“You should probably learn to forgive the occasional prank,” Tubbo chimed in.

Techno sighed dramatically. “Fellow Americans, save me from this child. Please, I beg you. I need help. Desperately.”

Cara sniggered. “Only if it’s funny. At any rate, this should definitely be an...interesting year, don’t you think?”

Sam hummed in agreement. “Sorry for the sudden departure, but I’m gonna dip now that we’re done - I’ve got a bit of overdue homework to hand in. Oh yeah: Tommy, Techno, thanks a ton for beating that Bakugo guy in third place. He was at the same arena as Tommy, Charlie, and I, and decided that being reckless enough with his explosions to accidentally blast a guy with a self-destruction Quirk was a great idea. He ended up setting me off again in an area I’d already blown through, which was a waste of perfectly good explosion juice. Anyway, see you guys at school, or on the server or whatever. Byeeeeeeeeee.”

The others all slowly disconnected as well, bidding their own farewells, until it was just the Watsons left together in their house.

Techno stood up from where he’d been sitting on the floor and flopped down on an empty couch. “Whew, that’s a bit of a relief, honestly.”

Tommy followed Techno’s lead, standing up from the floor, and flopped down on top of Techno. “Whaddya mean, big man? I dunno about you, but it seemed pretty obvious you’d gotten in to me. ‘Sides, they’d have to be crazy not to let you in after you saved that Ochako lady.”

“Uraraka,” Techno corrected. “But...well, I was a bit worried they’d disqualify me or something because of the whole...y’know, the chomping on her neck thing. I’d be pretty creeped out if that happened to me, honestly.”

Wilbur hummed in agreement. “Well, true, but you did also literally save her life from their own busted robot. Not sure if I mentioned it to you after you woke up, but she did say not to worry about the biting thing.”

Techno groaned. “Still, not exactly what I’d call an ideal first impression at a new school. Eh. Here’s hoping she isn’t in 1-B, that’d be a bit awkward.” Techno rolled over onto his back, flipping Tommy onto the carpet in the process, who elected to just stay there. “Wait, we actually know, like...a pretty decent proportion of the 1-B students now, right? And we’re, what, thirty percent Americans? That’s a pretty big coincidence right there, not gonna lie.”

“Well, Present Mic is gonna love you guys,” Kristin grinned. “Spoilers, but he’s the English teacher for the entire first year, and counting Wilbur and Tommy that's...what, eight native English speakers out of 1-B’s twenty total. It’s gonna be a breeze.”

Tommy sat up, eyes sparkling with excitement. “Oh, and I could help Tubbo out with English! Mina too if she also needs the help, actually. I’m not sure if Techno’s started mind-controlling me or something, but I’m pretty sure I’m actually going to enjoy English this year.”

Techno made a noise of disagreement. “Take that back, Tommy. English is a wonderful subject, which is...just painfully ironic coming from an American to a Brit.”

Wilbur rolled his eyes and pulled himself up through the ceiling, wisely moving himself out of what would surely be an unwarrantedly long, if humorous, argument. Kristin and Phil followed suit and walked back into the kitchen, already planning a celebratory dinner for their trio of teens all making it into the school of their dreams.

The week between the Entrance Exam results coming out and the school year beginning flew by, and before they knew it the trio were waking up bright and early to get dressed into their new uniforms in time for school. Tommy was as energetic as usual after a few minutes of consciousness, while Techno was practically still asleep on his feet even after a strong cup of coffee. What united the two brothers was their hatred of the formal blazer-and-tie uniform; having grown extremely used to the total lack thereof in American and British public schools respectively. Wilbur was also unused to such a formal uniform, but didn’t awfully mind it.

Tommy had been getting coached on his tie-tying skills by Kristin (who had one as part of her hero costume) for the entire past week, but still had to be saved by Kristin’s superior technique. Techno managed to get it on - though it was fairly scruffy-looking - while Wilbur tied it perfectly on his first attempt and spent the remainder of his spare time before they travelled to UA laughing at Tommy’s misery.

In characteristic fashion, Phil bid them all farewell and bailed out through the sunroof as they drew near to the building. “Remember, we’ll be taking the train to be a bit less obviously related from now on,” Kristin warned as they pulled in to the staff parking. “Consider it a test of your undercover skills: how long can you prevent anyone from figuring out we’re your parents? No pressure to participate, just thought it might be fun.”

“I never lie, Mother, so this may prove hard for me, but I shall do my best,” Tommy promised solemnly. Wilbur poked him in the nose.

“You? Never lie?” Wilbur snorted.

“Absolutely!” Tommy declared. “Look me in the eyes, Will. Do these look like lying eyes to you?”

“...yes?”

Tommy chortled. “Well, okay, you got me there. Uhhhhh… totally not a distraction, last one to the classroom’s a rotten egg?”

“Deal. Bye, Mum, see you after school,” Wilbur greeted, before walking directly through the car’s door and a wall into the nearest building.

Tommy hastily bid Kristin his own farewell before running after his oldest brother, while Techno simply sighed and stepped out of the car.

“Where’s your competitive spirit, Tech?” Kristin teased.

“Buried somewhere alongside my will to live,” Techno deadpanned. “I’m joking, obviously. Tommy apparently forgot that I’ve got limited omniscience, and I’m pretty sure the voices would find it hilarious to help me beat him. Bye Mom, good luck with your second-years.” He raised a hand in farewell, before turning around and calmly walking into the building.

Naturally, Techno walked into the classroom marked 1-B first, having been given mostly-accurate instructions on how to get there. What he had missed, however, was that there was in fact an orientation ceremony going on in an entirely different building - though, given the amount of cry-laughing he heard in his head, his voices had been fully aware and were deliberately messing with him. Techno sighed. “Wow. Thanks, guys. Really helpful.” Dumping his bag on a random empty desk, Techno burst out the door.

He had to draw on a fraction of his Quirk to do it, but Techno made it to the school hall in time for the opening assembly - though he couldn’t see his brothers in the massive crowd. Spotting Pony’s distinctive horns instead, he took a seat next to her and the rest of the U-Americans before the Principal’s speech started.

Twenty minutes later, the Principal’s speech ended to a smattering of polite applause, and Pony had to poke Techno in the side to wake up. They filed along their row of seats to the 1-B classroom, outside of which Tommy, Wilbur, Tubbo, and a red-headed girl Techno didn’t recognise already stood. Tommy gave Techno a smug grin. “Looks like I won, eh, Blade?” he started. Techno shook his head.

“Nahhhhh. I dropped my bag in the class before the opening ceremony, that counts.”

“Shit,” Tommy swore in English. “Ah well, who cares about little races like that anyway. It’s study time, boys!” With that, Tommy swept into the class himself, followed by the rest of 1-B.

The British child was immediately grateful that he wasn’t in Techno’s shoes, as he was able to quickly locate his desk by virtue of his legal name - Tom Simons - being written in plain English on his nameplate, while the Blade had to find the series of kanji corresponding to his Japanese legal name. He eventually gave up searching by himself and asked the much-more-bilingual Pony for help, who pointed it out to him after only a few seconds.

Tommy’s desk was, alas, separated from Tubbo’s - Tommy being in the third row’s fourth seat, Tubbo in the first row’s third seat. On the bright side, Wilbur was right behind him, and Techno was only two seats over. He could work with this.

As Tommy settled into his seat, he noticed Pony walk up to a dirty-blond-haired guy Tommy had never seen before who sat in the back left.

“Hi,” she greeted in English. “You look American. Are you American?”

The other kid nodded. “Yup. Clay Nicholls, pleasure to meet you. And you are…?”

Pony squealed in happiness. “Pony Tsunotori. Did you know you’re the seventh American in our class? Do you have Discord? You should get Discord, we made a group for us called the U-A-mericans as a joke, but it’s also actually pretty chill.”

Clay shrugged. “Why not? I take it you all have met each other before? At the entrance exam, I assume?”

Pony nodded. “You bet. Most of us were at the same testin’ area - me, Karl, Cara, and Techno were anyway, and Sam and Charlie were at the same arena as Techno’s brother Tommy.”

Clay tilted his head. “You, Karl, Cara, Techno, Sam, Charlie, Tommy, me. Isn’t that eight, then?”

Pony gasped in mock horror. “What? Naw, Tommy - and also Techno’s other brother Wilbur - are British.”

Clay nodded in understanding as Tommy sputtered from across the room. “I can hear you, Pony!”

“I know,” she fired back. “Wouldn’t do to try bein’ all sneaky about it, it ain’t like many other people are talkin’.”

“Is it just me, or do you get more Southern when you’re talking faster?” Clay asked.

Pony blushed slightly. “Well, now that you mention it, I can’t help but notice.” She shook her head. “Anyway, here’s my Discord, add me and I’ll get Sam to add ya to the server.”

A green-haired girl who none of them had met yet suddenly spoke up in Japanese. “Looks like someone’s coming. I suggest you guys get to your seats.”

Tommy did a double-take as her head detached from her body to sweep the classroom. “Excuse me, lady, are you missing an eye?”

The girl laughed. “Yup. It’s my Quirk, Lizard Tail Splitter. The eye’s on the way back, I had it watching the staircase for a teacher.” As if on cue, a chunk of face containing an eye shot through an open window and right back into her skull. “I’d explain it, but I’m fully expecting the teacher to have Quirk explanations as part of our introductions. Anyway, shhh, here he comes.”

Pony barely made it back to her seat in time for the door to fly open and a large man in a red-and-silver hero costume to step into the classroom. Technoblade almost fainted on the spot.

Standing in front of them was his favourite Japanese hero by a country mile, the only Pro Hero he’d ever heard of with a blood Quirk: Sekijirou Kan, hero name Vlad King. Techno was by no means a massive hero fanboy, but for Vlad King he’d made an exception.

Having a blood-related Quirk - one which actively encouraged him to be violent, even - had never been easy for him. He didn’t know exactly what had led to him being orphaned and left on the streets of San Francisco where Phil found him, but he’d always privately suspected that it was his birth parents being disgusted by his Quirk: after all, he’d been abandoned at around the age of four, the same age at which Quirks usually manifested.

As such, he’d generally hidden the true nature of his Quirk from people - hell, in the middle school they attended he’d simply claimed that his Quirk was minor precognition, a lie made easy to maintain with the occasional help of his voices and his outwardly stoic demeanour that made it easy to hide when he was surprised by something.

Vlad King, meanwhile, was the first Pro Techno had heard of in either America, Britain, or Japan who openly used a blood-related Quirk in heroics. Techno’s research revealed that he had indeed been subject to an awful lot of unwarranted negative press over the years, but crucially he’d actually gotten through it - establishing himself solidly in the Japanese Top 200 despite peoples’ bias.

As Techno’s brain imploded slightly, Tommy was laughing internally at Techno’s situation. Wow, Blade, this must be real awkward for you, he thought. Ah well. He’ll get over himself eventually. Tommy turned his attention back to Kan as he introduced himself.

“Good day, class,” he started. “My name is Sekijirou Kan, hero alias Vlad King, but you all will know me as Kan-sensei.” His voice was gruff but kindhearted - almost fatherly. “Now. Seeing as 1-A elected to do theirs during the opening ceremony, we have the field free to do a Quirk Assessment Test.” He pulled a stack of clothing bundles out from under his desk. “Please come grab your PE uniforms, then get changed and meet me on Field C. Don’t worry, you’ll get a chance to introduce yourselves to each other there.”

The class rushed forward to grab their uniforms, which were individually labeled with names. Techno stood back and decided to pick his via process of elimination, though Pony decided to grab his and chuck it at him instead.

As he stepped out the door, Techno was struck with the sudden realisation that he had no idea where on Earth the locker rooms actually were, so he simply followed the small crowd of people who had exited before him as his voices shouted out a multitude of conflicting directions to him.

The class burst out onto the field in their shiny new PE uniforms, discovering that they had apparently been sized correctly as well as being altered to fit their physical mutations, if any. Tubbo’s had a zippable hole poking out of his back just above the waistline that fit his stinger snugly, as well as zip-up slits in the back for his wings. Pony’s had a slightly wider neck hole to ease fitting her horns through, and the pants seemed designed to accommodate her oddly-shaped legs and hooves. Cara’s looked like she was simply covered in her usual wooly fluff, but dyed the UA colours - apparently her costume had been sewn out of her own wool, which allowed her Quirk to function seamlessly through it as if it wasn’t even there - and also featured specially-shaped pants for her hooved feet.

Tommy himself was relieved to no longer be wearing the suffocating blazer and tie. The sports uniform was light, breathable, and seemed pretty tough to boot - plus he could easily equip his iron armour from his inventory over it without difficulty.

Vlad King was waiting for them on the field. “Welcome to your first Quirk Assessment Test,” he said by way of greeting. “We’re going to be doing one of these once a term to measure your progress, so your results will be recorded for future reference - though this isn’t for marks.”

He scanned the class. “Most of you probably did similar physical tests in middle school - sprinting, ball throwing, grip strength, and so forth. The key difference here at UA is that we use these basic tasks as assessments of your Quirks - not only their strength, but your creativity in applying them. Unless otherwise stated, you are free to use your Quirks in all physical and combat assessments.”

The class started whispering in excitement, only stopping when Kan raised his voice. “Tom Simons, would you please come to the front?”

Tommy stepped up, a nervous smile on his face. “Here, Kan-sensei.”

Kan pull a ball from his pocket and handed it to him. “You got first place on the entrance exam, correct? What was your longest softball throw in middle school?”

Tommy thought for a second, coming up completely empty. “Can’t say I remember, sir.”

Kan huffed. “Ah well, no surprises there I suppose. Regardless, the human average is about forty meters unaided. Would you kindly introduce yourself to the class, explain your Quirk, and then try throwing the ball with the assistance of your Quirk?”

Tommy nodded, turning to face the class. “Hey,” he started awkwardly. “My name is Tom Simons, though you can call me Tommy. I’m from Britain originally, as you might be able to tell. My Quirk is named Minecraft, and it lets me do a bunch of stuff - the big one is storing objects in an extradimensional inventory, but I can also dig and build things very quickly in one-meter cubes, craft tools, brew potions for either strengthening myself and allies or weakening enemies, and instantly equip clothing items for my head, body, legs, and feet. I usually use those slots for armour.” He demonstrated quickly, flicking through his hotbars and equipping then unequipping his usual armour.

Kan nodded as the class burst out into whispers. “Wow, that’s a really cool Quirk,” Cara whispered, mild envy in her voice. “I definitely want him on my team if we ever do group battles.”

Techno nodded. “Yeah, Tommy’s Quirk is pretty good, but honestly it still takes a lot of training to use. I remember when Dad was helping him learn that fishing rod grappling hook thing he does. He faceplanted into a wall about fifty times before figuring it out.”

Cara shrugged. “Eh, fair enough.” She opened her mouth to elaborate, but was interrupted by Tommy raising his own voice.

“Question, Kan-sensei? What qualifies as ‘throwing’ the ball?”

Kan thought for a second before answering. “On second thought, just launch it through any means that doesn’t involve you leaving the circle. You don’t need to physically throw it.”

Tommy grinned. “Excellent, excellent.” He pulled out a stack of dirt blocks from his inventory, and began towering up with them in the middle of the circle, jumping a full meter in the air before placing a block underneath him.

“How is that staying up?” Sam muttered. “It should, like, crumble or something, right?”

Techno chortled. “Nahhh. Tommy’s Quirk likes to play fast and loose with the laws of physics until he wants them to play nice again.”

Tommy yelled down from the top of his dirt tower, which had reached a full twenty meters in height. “I’ve attached the ball to a pair of fireworks, and I’m gonna use those to pull it along!”

Kan shouted back an affirmative, and Techno’s keen eyes spied a pair of crossbows in Tommy’s hands, each holding a firework with string tied around it, the string tied to the ball dangling between them. Tommy yelled “Firing!” and the fireworks zoomed off, traveling an impressive distance before fizzling out, the ball dropping to the ground. Tommy pulled out a shovel and started scooping, full meter cubes of dirt popping out with each motion, slowly dropping the teen back to the ground.

“One hundred and twenty-one meters,” Kan reported. “Not bad, though in the entrance exam you used much more explosive stuff. Couldn’t you have used that to launch the ball instead?”

Tommy scratched the back of his neck. “Maybe, but my parents are… well, let’s just call them hesitant to allow me to craft any more TNT in the near future after the exam thing.”

“Wait, what did you do in the entrance exam?” Tokage called out. Tubbo, standing next to her, turned to answer her with his eyes sparkling.

“It was so cool! He pulled a robot that was trapping me into his inventory, then launched himself up to the top of the zero-pointer with his fishing rod, slapped some TNT onto it, then boom! He blew its head right off!” Tubbo put a finger to his chin in thought as the rest of the class gasped and Tommy turned a faint shade of pink. “He did get knocked out by the explosion, though, which wasn’t as cool. I get why Phi- er, Tommy’s parents were a bit worried about explosives after that.”

“A shame, but it’s good to see you recovered well enough, young man,” Kan said as he clapped Tommy on the back, “Good effort. Next up - and I am randomising the order from here on out - Karl Jacobs!”

Karl stepped forward to introduce himself. “Hey, guys. My name’s Karl Jacobs - though you already knew that, anyway - and my family recently moved to Japan from America, so forgive my poor Japanese. My Quirk’s called Timestrange. It allows me to rewind time for everyone but me, though it’s got pretty limited duration and gives me a rough headache and a nosebleed whenever I overuse it.” He turned to Kan. “We don’t...like, have to use our Quirks if they’re not suitable for the task, right? Because I can’t think of any application of a time-rewinding Quirk for throwing a ball.”

Kan shook his head. “No, not at all. Quirks are powerful tools, but no tool will help in every situation. Take my Quirk, Blood Control.” He pulled out an orb of blood through the tube connected to the arm of his hero suit, leaving it floating in the air. “It’d be very good for throwing a ball, since I can just surround the ball in a sphere of blood and telekinetically move the ball that way - but it’s not going to be very good for, say, side-steps. Use your Quirks at your own discretion.” With that, Karl simply threw the ball like normal, earning a modest thirty-five meters.

“Next up, Caroline Shephard!”

Cara stepped forward and gave the class a wave. “Hi! My name’s Caroline but you can call me Cara, and I’m also from America originally. Spoilers, but there are somehow seven Americans in this class? Not sure how that happened.” Clay seemed to cough at that, while everyone else gasped in surprise. "Anyway, my Quirk is Sheep! I’ve got hooves, horns, and fluffy wool like a sheep, which I can control the colour of and also telekinetically manipulate to some extent. Sadly, I can’t manipulate other fabrics like Best Jeanist can, but on the bright side I’m never gonna need to buy a sweater in my life. On that note, it is...really hot having dark blue wool, so I’m gonna switch to white for now.” As she spoke, her wool faded from UA sports uniform colours to a simple white, which absorbed less heat. “Alright, that’s better. I’m only really able to wear clothes that are made of my own wool, since the wool can basically pass right through itself and shearing off my entire coat on a regular basis is really, really difficult and time-consuming. While my Quirk lets me make more wool on command, it doesn’t really let me stop growing it.” Cara turned to Kan-sensei and took the offered ball, forming a woolen sling to load the ball into. She stepped into the circle, whipped the sling around her head a few times, and catapulted it forwards - stretching out her hand to give the wool-covered projectile an additional tiny boost with her telekinetic wool-control.

“Two hundred and seventy-three meters,” Kan reported. “Well done, Cara. Next up, Tubbo Ashido.”

Tubbo buzzed over the crowd and landed in front of the teacher. “Hey, guys! I’m Tubbo! Mina in Class 1-A is my twin sister, though our Quirks don’t share many similarities. Anyway, my Quirk is named Acidic Bumblebee! I’ve got bee wings to fly with, bee antennae that are super sensitive to wind movement, and a bee stinger that can inject either powerful poison or acid. It’s also pretty tough, so I can hit people with it.”

Tubbo took the offered ball and stood in the centre of the circle, then buzzed his wings to begin flying directly upwards. Once he reached a suitable height, he chucked the ball into the air and brought around his stinger. With a heavy-sounding thwack, he swung his body around to hit the ball with his sting like a baseball bat, launching the projectile across the field before flying back down.

“One hundred and fifty-three meters,” Kan announced. “I suggest trying to angle the ball upwards a little rather than just sideways next time around, but accuracy with hitting things is a skill that will take a lot of practice to develop.” Tubbo nodded as Kan called out the next name. “Charlie Dalgleish!”

Charlie flowed through the crowd, reforming himself next to Kan and nodding to the class. “Hey guys, I’m Charlie, another American. My Quirk’s called Slimebody, which is a pretty sensible name seeing as how I’m literally made of slime. I can turn myself liquid, shape myself and then harden my body again to gunk up machinery or grab people. If you cut me, nothing really happens, but if you cut a chunk of me off I goop off a smaller version of myself that’s actually in some kind of a hive-mind with my main body. I can also do that at will if I need to slime around in two places at once. I’m also able to regenerate any slime I lose, but it’s pretty draining to do so so I prefer to have my split parts just slime right back on into my main body whenever they’re done with whatever they were doing. Oh, and there’s a limit to the hivemind range, sadly.”

Tokage raised her hand. “Wait, can you form slime that you’re controlling from a distance into...like, eyes and stuff?”

“Yup! I can even do that on my normal body as well, actually!” Charlie demonstrated, forming a dozen or so eyes all over various points on his face which began blinking concertedly. His extra eyes had half-transparent lids, while his regular ones seemed to be almost opaque. A dark-haired girl turned faintly green and asked him to stop, to which he happily obliged.

Kan handed him the ball, and Charlie absorbed his entire left arm, using the excess slime to lengthen his right arm into a long tentacle with the ball at the tip. Swinging his arm around like a sling in a similar fashion to Cara, he flung the ball across the field. “Two hundred and fifty-six meters,” Kan announced. “Next up, Ibara Shiozaki!”

A girl who seemed to have vines for hair stepped forward, clasping her hands and bowing towards the class. “Greetings, classmates. I am Ibara Shiozaki, and I pray that we will be able to learn to work well together over the course of this year.” She stood up straight and scanned the class. “May we all find the guidance we seek in using our abilities for good, and find the strength to resist temptation to do evil.” Techno shuddered slightly, finding her tone to be awfully similar to that of some of the people who had judged him for his ‘evil’ Quirk in the past. Hopefully she was just overly theatrical. “My Quirk is named Vines, and it allows me to grow strong vines from my head, which can serve as either a zealous sword or holy shield against evildoers.”

Her vines fanned out behind her head in demonstration, before she sent a handful of them to grab the ball from Kan-sensei. Standing perfectly in the centre of the circle, she grew her vines to even greater lengths, burrowing beneath the dirt around her only to arch up into a windmill-esque tower above her, from which she began spinning the ball ‘overarm’ through the air. Releasing it at its peak, the ball sailed through the air as her vines retreated back into her head.

“Three hundred and fifty-two meters, well done. Next: Pony Tsunotori!”

Pony eagerly jogged up to the front. “Heya! I’m Pony Tsunotori, and I don’t really mind which name you guys call me by. I was born in America, but my family moved to Japan seven years ago. My Quirk is called Horn Cannon. It’s what gives me these massive horns,” she said, pointing to the horns in question - which stretched a full forty centimeters above her head. “I can shoot them off at will, they regrow immediately, and I can remotely control two of them at a time. I’m still working on balance to properly fly with them, though.”

Stepping into the centre of the circle, Pony simply reached up to impale the ball on one of her horns, before firing it with a crack sound across the field. Once the horn left her head, she stretched her arm forward to help focus her telekinesis on the horn, accelerating it faster and further before it fell out of range.

“Four hundred and eighteen meters,” Kan announced. “Next up is Wilbur Soot.”

Wilbur walked through the crowd, toggling on his Quirk to do so literally rather than figuratively. “Hello! I’m Wilbur, and for some reason Tommy neglected to mention that he, Techno and I are brothers.”

Tommy laughed nervously. “Oops. Yeah, my bad, sorry about that, Will.”

Wilbur shook his head. “Anyway, I’m from Britain as well, and Mum and Dad adopted me when I was still a baby, so I remember living in America after they moved there and adopted Techno, as well as moving back to Britain, adopting Tommy, and finally moving all the way over here to Japan for work.”

“That’s an awful lot of moving,” a kid with jet-black skin mused. “What dark profession could ever necessitate such constant change?”

Wilbur frowned, but shrugged aside the remark and continued with his introduction. “Anyway, my Quirk is named Phantom. I’m able to turn myself and everything on my person intangible and semitransparent at will, and while intangible I can choose whether or not I am affected by objects - but objects are never affected by me. For example, I can walk into a wall, then choose to be affected by the wall segment underneath my feet - letting me jump off of it - while still ignoring the rest of it. It’s pretty tricky to master, so I’m better at just walking through walls and either pulling myself up through ceilings or dropping down through floors. If I stop being intangible while inside something, we recoil from each other.”

Taking the ball, Wilbur added “Oh, yeah, same thing happens if I drop something while inside an object - the object I drop and the object it’s inside recoil violently from each other.” With that, he turned intangible and dropped into the ground beneath the circle.

Wilbur, within the ground, dropped down by one meter at a time, allowing his legs to bend and take the impact before switching what piece of terrain he wanted to be affected by to be one meter down. Once he hit five meters below the surface, he did a regular cricket throw and released the ball, which - suddenly overlapping with the matter of the earth - was violently expelled into the air at high speed. Wilbur toggled off his Quirk and shot into the air himself, landing in a crouch that successfully absorbed the impact.

Kan showed him the score: eighty-two meters. “Well done - that’s a very creative use of the repelling properties of your Quirk.” Wilbur gave him a small smile before heading back into the crowd. “Alright, next up is Chinokami Denpunoka!”

Techno stepped forward, scratching nervously behind a pointed ear. His voices started yelling TECHNO-CHAN, SAY TECHNO-CHAN at him, but he pushed them to the back of his head.

“Hey, everybody. My legal name’s Chinokami Denpunoka, but that’s just weird Japanese immigration rules at work - please just call me Technoblade, or Techno for short. It’s way easier.” Techno took a breath, happy to see that most of the class had given him a short nod.

“So, as Wilbur explained, I’m his and Tommy’s brother - born in America, got adopted, moved to Britain, then moved here for the tail end of middle school.”

Techno’s stress level was gradually increasing: he was about to tell the class something that had tanked his reputation at least twice before. Calm down, he told himself. It’s not like other people don’t need to deal with worse. He saw Wilbur nod to him and flash him a thumbs up.

“My Quirk is called Blood Spirit, and it’s got a couple of different effects. First off, there’s the passive component. I’ve got a crowd of...voices, basically, in my head. They’re pretty chaotic, and they’ve helped me out about as much as they’ve messed with me - honestly they seem to do whatever seems funny to them.”

He paused again, gauging the crowd’s reaction. Most of them seemed either nonchalant or slightly amused, though he noticed that Shiozaki had closed her eyes.

“Then there’s the active component,” he continued. “I’m able to absorb blood from my body to drastically boost my physical speed and strength. This can, obviously, have side effects if I use up the blood in my system - my blood’s better at carrying oxygen than most peoples’, but I still passed out and needed a transfusion after overexerting myself to save someone during the Entrance Exam.” He met Karl’s eyes for a second, who gave him a slight nod.

“As such, I generally use other peoples’ blood to fuel my Quirk instead, when it’s available - it still functions as Quirk fuel when I drink it, though doing that activates the boost immediately unless I consciously suppress it and hold the power for later. I can’t hold back the power like that for very long - maybe an hour tops, at this point.” His gaze swept the class again - Shiozaki was seemingly deep in prayer, but everyone else seemed pretty much unbothered. Tokage raised her hand.

“Sorry if it’s a dumb question - er, questions, rather - but I’ve gotta ask - one, does that mean you drink blood when you need the boost for combat from people, and two, where do you get the blood from?”

Techno clapped his hands, grateful for the distraction and a better way to explain the darker aspect of his Quirk. “Excellent questions. To answer the second question first, firstly my family are kind enough to donate some blood whenever they can, which we keep frozen at home and thaw to mix with some anticoagulant when I need it. Secondly, there’s a sufficient number of people who have blood-related Quirks that there’s actually a government program where they test how much blood you need and allow you to draw a certain amount per month, which helps out a ton.”

Techno paused for another moment. “I don’t need all that much blood, but my voices do get antsy if I don’t get the stuff on a fairly regular basis - animal blood helps, but it’s really no substitute, sadly. We’ve learned that they also like it when I do pretty much anything adrenaline-inducing, so hero work seemed like kinda a natural fit for me since it’s both thrilling and...well, to answer your second question, yeah, I can take blood from people too.”

Shiozaki’s praying seemed to grow more fervent, but otherwise the class was just focused on him. “I try not to, and obviously I need to shelve the bloodlust so as not to, y’know, kill anyone. To put it this way, the last time I started freaking out and trying to suck someone’s blood was after I spent half the blood in my system at the entrance exam, and even then I managed to stop myself by reaching my potion in time.”

The class looked slightly confused at that, so Techno clarified. “Tommy can brew a potion called Weakness that also functions as a Quirk suppressant. I keep a fresh one on me at all times in case I need it, and that goes for my hero uniform as well. Just for future reference, if I ever end up overusing my Quirk and start going crazy, the potion’s generally on my belt or in my front pocket, but that shouldn’t happen.”

Techno looked Shiozaki - who was looking up at him now - in the eyes, his confidence blossoming. “I know my Quirk doesn’t seem the best fit for heroism. Quite a lot of people have reminded me over the years that it seems like the Quirk of a villain. Repeatedly. But I’m here to learn to control it, and… find the strength to resist the temptation to do evil, I suppose.”

Shiozaki had the decency to turn away in embarrassment as Techno quoted her earlier words. Techno turned to Kan-sensei, who was offering him the ball. “Question, sensei - well, two questions, actually.” Kan nodded. “Number one, from what I’ve read you’ve also got richer blood than most people, like I do, right?

Kan nodded. “Comes with the Quirk, I suppose. I’ve also got stronger blood vessels, so my blood’s more concentrated than most peoples’.”

“That makes sense. Second question, could you spare any blood for me now? I’d like the opportunity to see if your blood’s any stronger than normal, on account of you having a blood Quirk.”

Kan nodded again, and produced a small orb that he floated directly into Techno’s mouth. The pink-haired teen swallowed, and his eyes flashed red as his veins began to glow slightly.

“Wow, that...yeah, that’s different. Damn. I’ve got one more question, Sensei, but I’ll throw the ball first.”

Techno focused his power into his right arm - a technique he had developed with Phil to up his duration and efficiency was to leave the rest of his body as-is and boost only a small portion at once. This time, though, he wanted to fire out all the energy he’d just taken in, since it would just dissolve and be wasted afterwards otherwise.

He’d done a similar move once before without adequately bracing his arm, and had promptly shattered his wrist - this time, he made sure to also pour power into strengthening the capillaries running through his muscles to take the recoil instead of his bones.

For a second, Techno’s arm almost fully glowed red, before he pitched the ball into the air with a shockwave of his power. He heard a boom as the ball shattered the sound barrier, and his arm almost immediately began to sting all over from the shock of the power it had just released. Shaking his arm out to relieve the pins-and-needles sensation, he looked to Kan-sensei.

“Six hundred and fifty-four meters!”, Kan announced. “Well done! I’m curious how much of an effect - if any - using my blood specifically had on that, but that’s a question for another day. Now then, you said you had another question?”

Techno couldn’t hold back a smile as he whipped a notepad and pen from his pockets. “Could I get your autograph?”

Chapter Text

The rest of class breezed by without much hassle - the majority not having any Quirk useful for ball-tossing, with two exceptions.

Clay Nicholls explained his Quirk, Luck, which allowed him to consciously influence probabilistic events. He first demonstrated this by tossing the ball and exerting his Quirk, which resulted in a particularly strong breeze happening to pass by, launching it further - ending up with an impressive sixty-meter throw, well beyond the human average.

He then explained that he had used his Quirk to increase the odds of the Entrance Exam robots having system errors, which slowed them down enough for him to reach their deactivation switches even while fighting effectively Quirkless.

Finally, he mentioned that he’d heard about the large crowd of Americans, and had been exerting his Quirk long-distance to try and make the school’s sorting systems put them all into the same class ‘as a joke’ - though he wasn’t sure if he’d actually had any impact, given that he lived a full kilometre from the school and his Quirk’s power decreased linearly with range.

Monoma, meanwhile, instead elected to copy Tokage’s strategy (and Quirk) and simply fire off a hand to move the ball as far as he could before losing connection, after which he had to go retrieve and reattach the hand before his copy of Lizard Tail Splitter timed out.

The next event on the table was the fifty-meter dash, which Tommy was very eager for - he guessed he’d be able to beat almost anybody with a high-potency Speed potion. He lined up at the starting line alongside Karl, Wilbur, Shiozaki, and Kuroiro.

Wilbur’s brain was focused as he created his strategy for the race. In theory, he could force his Quirk to recognise a slanted slice of the earth beneath his feet as ‘solid’ while he was intangible, which could create a ramp for him to skid down. If he then released his Quirk at the right time, he could catapult upwards and pop back up right at the finish line. He swapped into his Phantomised state, his skin growing translucent as he readied himself for the starting pistol.

Tommy, meanwhile, had taken a swig of his Speed potion, the energy filling his veins like liquid lightning. His limbs felt light, and he bounced on the balls of his feet, ready to go.

Karl, too, had his own plan. He had looked once at the list of events, and almost immediately given up on using his Quirk for any of them at all - but then a flash of inspiration struck. He remembered a strategy from an old, pre-Quirk game his parents had given him, which was half of the inspiration behind his Quirk’s name. Readying his mind to bear his Quirk’s burden, he took his mark.

“On your marks,” Kan called. “Get set.” BANG!

The starting pistol fired, and Tommy immediately took the lead as Wilbur fell through the ground. Shiozaki and Kuroiro had given up on using their Quirks for this test - Shiozaki’s hair being nigh impossible to move with within the confines of her lane, and Kuroiro’s Quirk lacking the shadows necessary in the bright morning sun.

As Tommy neared the end, Wilbur popped up right behind him, soaring through the air and flying across the line a split-second after Tommy reached it, landing in a roll to soften the fall. Kuroiro came next, followed by Karl, who stretched out his hand-

The starting pistol fired, and Karl instantly appeared across the finish line and fell to the ground clutching his head, as Wilbur fell through the ground. Tommy let out a confused “Wha?”, pausing for a second, before taking an instant lead - followed by Kuroiro and Shiozaki, who had given up on using their quirks due to lack of darkness and lack of space respectively.

As Tommy neared the end, Wilbur shot up right alongside him, flying over the finish line a split-second before Tommy reached it and landing in a neat roll.

“Well done,” Kan called. “Karl, you made it in 0.1 seconds. Wilbur, 4.23. Tommy, 4.32. Kuroiro, 7.12. Shiozaki, 7.77.”

Karl was still on the ground, and Tommy turned to him with a look of concern. “Karl? You alright, man? How’d you do that, anyhow - I thought you had a time reversal Quirk?”

Karl groaned. “Saw it...in a videogame. I didn’t mention this earlier, my bad. When I rewind time, it rewinds around me, meaning I stay in the same location as I was in when I started the rewind.”

“Ahhhhh,” Tommy said. “I see, I see - so you saw Will win, reached the end yourself, then rewound us back to the time the pistol fired?”

Karl rolled over onto his back, his eyes shut tight. “Basically, yeah, though I’m pretty sure you won last time. Maybe you hesitated ‘cos you saw me? I dunno.”

Tommy’s mouth did its best impression of a goldfish for a second. “Fuck,” he swore. “Ah well, I’ll beat him next time for sure. You alright, big man?”

Karl nodded. “Yeah, it’ll pass. This was a pretty long rewind - seven seconds or so, a bit longer than the Entrance Exam.”

Kan’s gruff voice came to them from the starting line. “Karl, should I call Recovery Girl?”

“Only if she can provide headache tablets, Sensei,” Karl called back. Tommy helped the brown-haired teen up, who walked slightly unsteadily back to the start, still rubbing his temples. Kan pulled out his phone and texted someone - presumably Recovery Girl - before turning to the pair.

“Tommy, please take Karl to the nurses’ office? He’ll need at least a checkup before doing any more tests.” Tommy nodded, and walked off with Karl in the direction of the medical centre - which he’d visited a day or two after the Entrance Exam when she personally insisted on giving Tommy a check-up once he left the hospital.

“Next set of runners!” Kan called. “Ashido, Komori, Tsunotori, Charlie, Cara!”

Tubbo narrowly beat Pony, her horn-powered flight strategy failing as she lost her grip and faceplanted in the last ten meters. Charlie managed to beat Cara to third place on a technicality by splitting off a smaller version of himself and throwing himself across the line.

The next race featured Techno, Kaibara, Kodai, Tokage, and Monoma, with Karl and Tommy returning with headache pills and water in time to watch. Techno took a swig of blood from his bottle just beforehand, being unsuccessful in persuading Kan to volunteer some of his own, more potent variety. Tokage split herself into pieces and telekinetically launched herself forward, Techno charging up his legs and narrowly beating her in two mighty Quirk-enhanced leaps. Monoma came next, having copied Wilbur and Tokage’s Quirks to replicate Wilbur’s slide trick - albeit a lot more recklessly - splitting himself apart and slowing himself down with Lizard Tail Splitter to land gently at the end. Kodai beat Kaibara to fourth place, and they moved on to the final race.

Clay, Tetsutetsu, Sam, Awase, and Kendo lined up next. None of them had Quirks that could obviously be used for increased mobility, Wilbur noted - Sam’s Self-Destruct couldn’t provide directional thrust, for instance, and even if Clay manipulated probability to give himself a tailwind it’d boost his opponents as well.

“Question, Kan-sensei,” Clay asked. “Are we allowed to sabotage our opponents?”

“Nope,” Kan replied, an apologetic tone in his voice. “The tests are designed to test your individual capabilities, not your offensive ones - though, out of curiosity, what was your plan to sabotage them?”

Clay grinned. “Up the chances of their shoelaces coming undone, then up the chances of them stepping on their own shoelaces by accident.”

Wilbur hadn’t even considered that possibility - evidently Clay had put a lot of thought into how to use his Quirk in battle, maybe even as much as Wilbur had for his own.

The pistol fired, and the surprisingly-athletic Clay ended up narrowly winning the closest race they’d had by far - followed up by Kendo, Sam, Awase, and finally Tetsutetsu, all within one second of each other.

“Next up is grip strength!” Kan announced. “Follow me to Gym Gamma!”

“No rules, and that includes what body part you use to pull the device,” Kan instructed. “Feel free to use your legs if you like. This test is just as much about your creativity as it is your brute force - I know Class 1-A’s Yaoyorozu broke the equipment and our previous record by creating a screw press, for example.”

Tommy was fairly confident that he’d place quite highly, as he pulled some rope out of his inventory to rig up an impromptu pulley system and multiply his force. Techno could probably beat him with his Quirk by focusing on the muscles in his hands. Kendo’s Big Fist also stood a decent chance. Cara and Tokage could add their telekinetic force to their physical force, and Charlie might be able to goop together an extra arm or something to press harder, but other than those he couldn’t really think of any Quirks in their class that could amplify force like that. Maybe Kaibara could find a creative use for Spiral?

The winner probably shouldn’t have been a massive surprise to anyone, but Tommy somehow didn’t see it coming - Monoma. Monoma borrowed Kendo, Cara, and Tokage’s Quirks to amplify his grip strength three separate ways. He had planned on copying Techno’s, but the Blade told him not to unless he happened to have a spare dose of Quirk suppressant on hand in case he succumbed to bloodlust, so Monoma picked Cara’s instead. He found that he could grow wool on command, but did not develop horns or hooves - the unrelated mutation aspects of her Quirk.

Next up was the standing long-jump, which took place back outside - Cara groaned, having grown comfortable in the air-conditioned gym away from the hot sun. Tommy offered her the use of his water bucket to create a temporary watery tube, but she declined, stating that “The only thing worse than being overheated is being covered in wet fleece.” She did end up allowing Charlie to liquefy and take up (temporary) residence in her wool, absorbing some of the heat in the process - Tommy also built her a temporary roof attached to a simple pillar to give her some shade.

Most of the class did pretty well at the long-jump: Tokage, Tubbo, and Pony flew across, Shiozaki used her vines to carry herself across, Cara telekinetically manipulated her own wool to boost her jump, Charlie threw himself across, Techno used a boosted jump, Tommy used his fishing rod, and Wilbur did his ground-clipping trick from the fifty-meter dash again, successfully arguing that he started standing still and did not touch the ground before reappearing on the other side.

(Karl did not successfully argue that he had “teleported, as far as anyone can see” to the other side - since in the process of getting there before the rewind he would have had to set foot on the ground across the line. He would later confess that he’d considered rewinding his conversation with Kan-sensei to “get a better outcome by using different dialogue,” but not judged it worthy of a likely migraine and nosebleed.)

The repeated side steps were next (back in the gym, to Cara’s relief). Charlie easily won by splitting himself in four and having all four versions side-step repeatedly - Tokage taking second place, not managing to convince Kan that her individual pieces were “basically the same thing” as Charlie’s clones.

The mushroom-obsessed Kinoko Komori managed to squeeze through a third place by growing two very springy mushrooms and bouncing herself between them rapidly. Monoma got fourth after copying Charlie’s Quirk, finding he couldn’t use it since it was primarily a mutation-type, then copying Komori’s instead and stealing her tactic. Everyone else did about the same as each other, with Tommy leading the pack thanks to another dose of Speed potion.

(Karl was once again unwilling to risk another hit of his Quirk’s drawback to pull a repeat performance of his teleportation trick.)

The final three tests went by fairly smoothly, with the only exceptional performances being in the distance run. The task was simple: run as far as possible in thirty minutes. Tommy used a pair of extended-duration Speed potions to easily grab first place, followed up by Tubbo (who flew for half the duration before his wings got tired), Techno (who used a continuous fraction of his Quirk thanks to his blood bottle), Pony (who flew the entire time but kept crashing), Tokage (who flew for the first ten minutes before giving up due to Quirk fatigue), and Monoma (who copied Tokage’s idea).

Tetsutetsu got his time to shine in the sit-ups, his evident gym training being a major help.

Finally, the seated toe-touch was easily won in a four-way tie between Tokage, Charlie, and Kendo using their Quirks, as well as Monoma borrowing Tokage’s.

The students returned to the 1-B classroom sweaty and exhausted, but with smiles on their faces. Wow, Tommy thought, if getting to use our Quirks is an everyday thing, I’m going to love this school!

His happy thoughts were rudely interrupted by one of Tokage’s detached hands slapping down a copy of the class schedule in front of him. His eyes scanned the timetable, and his forehead met the desk when he realised that they only had full-on heroics lessons on two days out of a six-day week.

On the bright side, one such lesson was tomorrow, so that was neat.

Kan-sensei returned to the front of the class after he and Tokage handed out the last of the schedules. “Alright everyone, I’ve got two pieces of good news for you all. Firstly, you’ve all got the rest of today off from your classes - though I suggest you spend the hours productively. Get familiar with the classrooms and where they are, find the cafeteria, et cetera.”

He pulled out a remote from under his desk and hit a button on it, causing a series of numbered-and-named briefcases to slide out from the wall. “Second piece of news, the Support Department finished up with all your costumes based on the specifications you gave them. Feel free to take yours now to give it a try, and if you have any last-minute adjustments or additions I recommend popping down to the Support Department to request changes, if you need any.”

Kan gave the class a bow. “Remember to return the costumes to the appropriate slot once you’ve finished with it - you’ll be needing them tomorrow. Dismissed.” With a final nod, he walked out the door.

Tommy immediately pulled out his rod and grabbed his costume container. “Ahhh, it’ll be nice to have some comfier clothes. I’m gonna go get changed, see you guys in a second.” He darted out the door, case in hand.

Kendo raised her voice. “I think Tommy has the right idea. Why don’t we all try to get changed into our costumes, then meet back here? The sooner we learn to recognise each other in battle, the better - especially if we’ll be working together tomorrow.” The class in general gave a nod and retrieved their respective cases, Tokage giving a helping hand - or, more accurately, two helping hands - in passing them down to everyone.

Techno gave her a nod as she handed him his case, which was surprisingly light - though he hadn’t exactly wanted it to weigh a ton, either. He waited for Wilbur to grab his, then the brothers walked down to the lockers together, talking along the way.

“I’m still surprised you ended up going for that design,” Wilbur commented. “It seems a bit… I dunno, too fancy? You’re a close-range and, honestly, pretty brutal fighter, right? Why such an elegant style?”

“Well,” Techno shrugged, “it’s not like I’m planning to be consumed by bloodlust constantly mid-battle. I picked up fencing recently for a reason - my Quirk boosts my speed and senses as well as my strength, so why not play into that rather than dressing like some kinda fantasy barbarian? Besides, it’s not like your ‘costume’ is any more fitting.”

Wilbur offered a shrug of his own. “Fair enough, though to be fair there’s not really much that can enhance my Quirk. I figured a relaxed and approachable look would serve me well.”

Techno raised an eyebrow. “Sure, but have you considered what you’re gonna do in the middle of summer? It’s not exactly sweater weather now, and that’s only gonna get worse.”

Wilbur chortled. “Like you’ve got room to talk, Blade. I’ve got two layers, you’ve got… what, two to four, depending on what body part we’re talking about?”

Techno could only shrug again, as they turned into the locker room. “Fair enough, Will. I’ll see you in a minute.”

“See ya.”

The pair dressed in separate stalls, both slightly self-conscious around the inbound horde of mostly-strangers.

Wilbur had already finished by the time the sizable crowd of the remaining male students came into the locker room, led by Tetsutetsu. “Ah, Soot-kun. Is that your...hero costume?” The steel teen looked slightly perplexed, taking in Wilbur’s simple yellow jumper, long black pants, and red beanie.

Wilbur shrugged, rubbing the back of his neck. “Pretty much? My Quirk isn’t really helped by much in terms of support gear, so I just had them make me clothes that could keep me warm underground and have big enough pockets to fit some other stuff. I do have elbow protection under the sweater, though -” he rolled it up to display a blue, metallic elbow pad - “since my big combat tactic is running through people and hitting them in the back of the head - and my elbows will be the closest bit of my arm for that.”

He rolled up the jumper a little, showing the twin batons tucked into sheaths at his waist. “I’ve also got these, in case I need ‘em. I considered applying for a gun, but I don’t have a firearm license yet. I do have an Airsoft gun in the meantime, though,” he said as he reached behind his back to pull out a small black pistol.

“Oh yeah, and the entire thing is fire-retardant and made out of an impact-distributing Kevlar weave, including the shirt I’ve got on underneath the jersey. Also, the beanie has a built-in communicator and tracker. Also also, the shoes have springs in them to help absorb the impact from big falls after I use the underground-launch trick to make big jumps.”

Tetsutetsu gave him an impressed smile. “Damn, dude, that’s a lotta stuff for such a plain costume! Sorry if you thought I was being all judgy. What kinda hero are you gonna be?”

Wilbur gave a half-shrug. “Underground, probably. I’d be pretty good at recon and espionage, given I can walk through walls and all that - honestly, it’s basically the perfect job for me.”

“Manly!” Tetsutetsu replied, beginning to strip off his PE uniform. Wilbur toggled on his Quirk and walked out through a wall to clear some space in the room, then leaned up against the doorframe and waited for people to emerge.

The first person he saw was Tommy, who was in the hallway. “Heyyyy, Will!” he called, jogging up. “Kinda forgot it takes most people more than a few seconds to put on their costumes. How’s yours?”

“Comfy,” Wilbur replied. “It’s weird to think something this light could possibly stop a bullet, but I guess that’s the way of the Support department. I’m still...slightly concerned by your choice in costume, though. Like, I know mine is casual, but have you considered yours might be a bit too casual?”

Tommy, standing before him in sneakers, jeans, and his favourite red-and-white T-shirt, grinned at him. “Whatever do you mean?”

“I mean that the first time you go on patrol whenever you get your license, other heroes are going to think you’re some random child.”

Tommy put a hand on his heart in mock horror. “Me? A random child? I’ll have you know, big man, my mother always told me I was a special child.”

“Yes, Mum has a way of putting things politely.”

Tommy burst out into sputtering laughter, and it took a full thirty seconds before he could control himself enough to speak cohesively again.

“Rude and uncalled for, but anyway. You do realise I’ll have my armour on in battle, right? Should make me a bit easier to distinguish.”

“Fair enough. Gimme a second to see how the Blade is doing?” With that, Wilbur walked back through the wall and directly through the door of Techno’s stall. Inside, his brother was currently struggling to lace up his boots.

“You know it's polite to knock, right,” he said, not even looking up.

Wilbur shook his head. “It still weirds me out how impossible it is to surprise you sometimes. Need help?”

“Yes,” Techno sighed gratefully, and Wilbur crouched down to help him with the laces as Techno fastened his cloak.

A minute or so later, Wilbur stepped through the door as Techno walked out of the stall in all his costumed glory.

A white, formal dress shirt covered his torso, long sleeves ending in ruffles. A cravat tie was done around his neck, a red gem sitting at the location of the knot, the ruffles matching those of his shirt’s cuffs. Black, elbow-length leather gloves stretched beneath his shirt, golden studs sitting on his knuckles to enhance his punches.

A white-fur-lined royal-red cape sat on his shoulders and reached down to his upper shins, done up by golden fastenings. His pants, dark grey bordering on black, reached down to his ankles - though they were covered by black, knee-high leather boots with gold-looking metallic toes.

Loops of red fabric fitted tightly around his waist, obscuring the belt beneath, which also held the scabbard for his simple, straight sword.

A golden crown sat on his head, multicoloured gems glistening and almost glowing in the light.

Finally, a mask of a pig’s face (complete with ears) was strapped onto his head - albeit only from the snout upwards, leaving his mouth exposed. The pink faux-fur blended in with his hair, and the strap was mostly hidden beneath his longish pink locks.

In a word, he looked regal.

Behind the mask, though, Techno was made nervous by the sudden stares from the room at large. Do they think the costume looks dumb? Is it the cape? Fortunately, Tubbo let out a squeal of admiration, relieving Techno of some of his anxiety. “Woo, Techno! Looking fancy!” Techno nodded his gratitude for the praise.

“Thanks, Tubbo. Hey, uhh, I know Wilbur explained the inner workings of his costume to us and all, but I think I’ll save that for when we’re all back at class - I’d rather not have to explain it twice, y’know?”

Tetsutetsu nodded. “Yeah, man, that makes sense. I’ll head to the class now, then. See you guys there!”

Techno followed him out, greeted by Wilbur at the door, who gave Techno a once-over. “Looks good. How’s it feel?”

Techno gave his limbs a few experimental swings. “Feels good, feels good. Could stand to take some time to get used to moving around with it, as well as to get used to the blades of course.”

Wilbur nodded. “Makes sense. I feel like there’s probably a pun on your name to make there somewhere, but I’ll leave Tommy to find it. Wanna head back to the class? Tommy’s there already.”

“Sure.” The pair headed back to the 1-B classroom, gaining a number of odd looks from passers-by at their costumed appearances.

They arrived back in class to see Tommy lying down on his back atop a desk, feet idly kicking the air in boredom - though he jumped up as they walked in, a grin appearing on his face at the sight of Techno’s costume. “Blade,” he greeted, “that looks sick. Sorry, your costume really ain’t ‘it’ if you know what I mean, Will. But that-” he gestured at Techno’s outfit - “is a costume that screams ‘hero’”.

Techno shrugged and walked over to his desk to sit down. “Well, that’s the point of wearing a costume, isn’t it?” He unclasped his cloak and folded it over to put on his desk as he sat down, not wanting to dirty it by having the fabric scrape the floor.

“True enough, true enough. Honestly, I had myself a bit of a think, and I realised I really should have asked for some kind of method to hold more potions.”

“Eh?” Techno asked. “Forty-five total slots for ‘em not enough for you?”

“No?” Tommy scoffed. “Besides, a bunch of those slots are reserved. Four for armour, one each for sword, shield, axe, pickaxe, rod, bow, crossbow, fireworks, TNT, flint and steel, a couple arrows of many kinds, a couple stacks of blocks, water bucket, lava bucket, slimeballs…”

“Okay, okay, I get it,” Techno acquiesced, raising his hands in mock surrender. “Ever think about saving slots through items other than potions? Scabbards exist, you know.”

“Well, sure, but scabbards take time to draw swords from, big man. Why not just keep my weapons in my hotbars?”

“Everyone else has to deal with that, Tommy,” Techno said exasperatedly. “It’s not like you even use your sword half the time, it’s not exactly the most nonlethal-”

Wilbur almost jumped for joy when his brothers’ bickering was interrupted by the door opening back up, revealing Tokage wearing what appeared to be a single purple bodysuit that covered her entirely from the neck to the toes. “Heya!” she greeted, flashing them a smile. “You two not trying on your costumes?”

Wilbur groaned. “We’re already in costume.”

Tokage paused at that, blinking twice. “Wow, you guys have no sense of style.” Ignoring Tommy’s spluttering, she looked over to Techno, who was idly playing with a corner of his folded cloak. “Nice costume, Techno. It suits you, in an odd way.”

“Thanks,” he shrugged. “Not gonna lie, I’m pretty curious what costumes everyone else ends up going with.”

“Same,” she replied. “Mine’s ma...wait, we were only gonna discuss specifics once everyone’s back, right?”

Techno grunted an affirmative and buried his head in the makeshift pillow of his cloak, only to immediately raise it again as the door swung open to reveal Monoma, Shiozaki, Charlie, and Karl.

Karl and Charlie raised their hands in greeting and walked over to Techno, followed by Monoma - who seemed to be happy that someone else had picked ‘formal clothing’ as an outfit design.

Karl had seemingly done similarly to Wilbur in just wearing regular-looking clothes (a purple-fade hoodie with a spiral design), albeit covered in a fair few more pouches and sheaths for various blades and other items. He also had visible elbow and knee pads, along with an odd-looking device on each hand that was mostly obscured by the hoodie’s long sleeves.

Charlie, meanwhile, was just a humanoid-shaped blob of goo with a bunch of metal-looking items floating around inside of him. Wilbur couldn’t tell if he had weaponized peoples’ discomfort with being around ‘nude’ people deliberately, or if he’d just not realised that - despite his utter lack of anything to cover - he was absolutely uncomfortable to look at.

Pony, Clay, Sam, and Cara were the next to arrive, joining the rest of the U-Americans (now also including Clay) in conversation by Techno’s desk.

Pony was wearing what seemed to be an orange jockey’s uniform, a long orange skin-tight shirt with pale markings around her neck and along her stomach. She also had matching pale pants, fingerless gloves, and horseshoe-esque knee-high boots.

Perhaps most striking, however, was the series of belts attached around various parts of her body, whose purpose Wilbur simply could not fathom. She had a harness around the back of her neck that went under her shoulders and connected across her spine, a band on each upper arm, a belt around her waist, and what appeared to be stirrups on the top of her boots. She even had a head harness with attached reins, for God’s sake. Wouldn’t that be a disadvantage in a fight? Wilbur thought. I assume she must have some reasoning - the support companies surely wouldn’t build something so impractical.

(Over in the 1-A classroom, Momo Yaoyorozu sneezed.)

Clay had opted for a more military look. His base outfit was a green hoodie with elbow plates, long black pants with knee guards, and lightweight boots with steel toes. He also had on a bulletproof vest, however - which was crisscrossed by two straps, one holding a submachine-gun and the other being a bandolier of knives. A holstered pistol sat on each hip, and Wilbur could see that the knife bandolier served double duty as a back strap for a long rifle. The vest itself had spare clips of ammunition attached to it in various places, as well as pockets for more gear.

What struck Wilbur as odd, however, was the simple white circle strapped onto the side of Clay’s face - a dot and curved line peeking out from beneath the hoodie. Wilbur decided to wait for Clay’s imminent explanation, rather than ask what its purpose was.

Sam was the most striking of the four by far, an impressive feat given how colourful Cara was. Sam wore a medieval-looking chestplate that seemed to be made of literal gold (though Wilbur guessed it was likely either merely gold-plated or simply painted), albeit covered in slits like the grate of an air vent.

His pants and heavy boots seemed to be made of similar material, though they didn’t have the slits in them. His forearms were covered by heavy golden bracers that stretched all the way up to his elbows. A crown made of seemingly the same substance sat on his head. A green-and-black gas mask with goggles completed the look, the straps wrapping neatly above and below his slightly pointed ears.

Once more, Wilbur was left mystified at the purpose of the equipment - at a guess it was an attempt to direct Sam’s Quirk, though to what end remained unclear.

“Hey guys!” Cara called as she walked in. Everybody who had arrived paused in their conversations to take in the sight.

Cara was definitely wearing the simplest outfit Wilbur had seen all day - since it was difficult to tell what outfit she was wearing at all. She was mostly covered in a layer of wool, at least an inch or two thick - only her face being visible on her upper body, which made the outfit look vaguely hoodie-esque. What was most striking, however, was how colourful it was. Her wooly fluff started off red at the very top of her head, and faded through all the colours of the rainbow and down to magenta at her feet. Said feet were also still visible, and she had foregone shoes as the clip-clop of her hooves was clearly audible.

Slightly embarrassed at the sudden silence, Cara’s face turned slightly pink before she spoke. “Well, I’ve certainly gotten attention, right? That’s pretty much the point of the colour scheme - I could have a more muted tone if I wanted, but where’s the fun in that?”

Nobody elected to respond, so she shrugged and clopped over to Techno’s desk, where the conversation slowly picked back up.

The rest of 1-B trickled in slowly over the course of the next fifteen minutes - the last people having apparently gotten lost on their way to the lockers. Once everyone was in their seats, Kendo stood up in the front of the class, calling their impromptu meeting to order.

“Alright, now that we’re all here-” she flashed a murderous look at Awase, who smiled nervously - “we are ready to begin. We’ll go in order of seat number, so Awase, you’re up first. Remember, we’re explaining our costumes to each other so we know exactly what each others’ capabilities are in battle, alright?” Nodding to Awase, Kendo took her seat.

Awase's costume was mercifully simple - a heavily armoured chestplate, overalls, and a toolbox on his belt for keeping blocks of wood and metal for his Quirk to use, also giving him a ‘mechanic’ aesthetic.

Kaibara wore a dark, armoured windbreaker with spiral patterns, covered in a white trench coat. His gloves and boots were heavily specialised, with sharpened fingertips and spike-tipped soles - allowing him to drill into things more efficiently when using his Quirk.

Tubbo (who Wilbur hadn’t noticed slip into the classroom at all previously) wore black pants, a green shirt, and a puffy, yellow-and-black coat - which he explained helped to absorb the impact to his wings if he ever happened to slam his back into something. (Said wings were untouched by any modifications - he said that anything strapped onto them would make them harder to flap at the speeds he needed and throw off his flying). A series of empty bottles sat on his belt, designed to be filled up with acid or poison and thrown like a grenade - an internal explosive turning the liquids into a cloud.

A pair of green goggles covered his eyes for protection when flying at high speeds. Finally, his stinger poked out of a hole in the back of his outfit - the flexible appendage being able to bend around his body to shoot acid, or sling between his legs to make melee attacks from a flying position without throwing his weight off-center.

Tommy was scribbling down notes in a notebook he pulled out of nowhere - Wilbur hadn’t been aware that Tommy owned any books voluntarily, though at a guess it was a gift from Tubbo given the yellow-and-black cover. Wilbur was at any rate happy to see that Tommy was apparently putting his curious mind to good use, as he was presumably taking notes on possible improvements.

The final member of the first row, Kuroiro, had the first ‘regular clothing’ outfit of the day - a black hoodie, with black pants and black sneakers. The only parts of him that weren’t black were the white of his eyes and hair - leading Wilbur to suggest black goggles and hair dye, which Kuroiro promised to think about.

Kendo was next, and it took her barely two seconds to explain that her robe didn’t really have any special features beyond ‘the usual’, which Wilbur took to mean the same Kevlar-weave composition as his own outfit.

Kodai’s outfit reminded Wilbur of a Pokeball with its colour scheme, though he didn’t mention it. It was mostly a simple - albeit stylised - jumpsuit and skirt, though the belt at her waist contained an assortment of objects to resize into weapons. Her hat, she added, was made of a metal alloy and weighted to fall rim-down - allowing it to easily trap people inside when enlarged.

Komori’s costume looked like a mushroom wearing a polka-dot dress, which struck Wilbur as a bit obvious for a prospective daylight hero - no villain would need to second-guess her Quirk, for certain. Her utility belt contained a bunch of gardening supplies (notably a water sprayer to hydrate her ‘shrooms), as well as sealed canisters of hydrated fungal spores she could toss to spawn large clumps of mushrooms quickly.

Shiozaki rounded off the second row with a simple white robe and sandals - though Wilbur wasn’t sure how the robe was staying on her shoulders, given how loose it seemed to be. Regardless, for a mostly-stationary combatant, it wasn’t like she’d likely be doing a lot of running around anyway.

Sam was up next, his golden armour shining in the light. “As you can see,” he started, “the armour’s been spray-painted with gold paint - not actual gold, that’d be too expensive - and heavily polished so it shines. The reason for the shine is to make my costume appear gaudy and impractical - but, while it is gaudy, it’s absolutely functional as well.”

He made a motion with his hand and twisted his wrist, resulting in the vents in the chestplate twisting open. “As you may have guessed, the armour is built to direct my explosions - internally it’s extremely blast-resistant, and I myself am fully immune to my own explosions’ effects, since my skin automatically hardens when I release a blast.”

He shut the chest vents and made another motion, this one seeming to click open the bracers on his arms - angling them into a rough cone shape with the open end around his wrists. Simultaneously, an identical movement happened to his boots, the sides clicking out to slant downwards from the knees to around his ankles.

“Where the previous mode was meant to direct the explosions forwards, this one is meant to angle them downwards - after all, Sir Isaac Newton’s laws still hold for all emissions of force. Equal and opposite reactions, you know? Blasting downwards should launch me upwards and let me do something of a super-jump, though it might trap a lot of heat inside the suit’s torso.”

He turned around, showing that angled ports in his back had opened up as well. “These slats are angled downwards and backwards, meaning they launch me forwards slightly as well. Oh, and before I forget, the boots have shock absorbers to protect me from big falls.”

Finally, he clicked to the suit’s final mode - which closed all vents, but seemed to shift all the various components apart slightly. “This is Release Mode. It’s not safe to release full-powered blasts inside the suit, since the rebounding force might be dangerous to me. As such, Release Mode loosens the connections between the individual components and lets me use a smaller blast to fire them off in preparation for a max-sized explosion. The suit should survive the process, but I’d need to take a few minutes to put it back on.”

Clicking back to the default mode, he bowed to the class. “Any questions?”

Only Techno’s hand shot up. “What’s the crown and gas mask for?”

Sam shrugged. “Mostly aesthetics, honestly, though the mask does also filter out dust and soot kicked up by blasts, the goggles provide a heads-up display of the suit’s integrity, and it’s got a radio integrated as well. The crown’s just for style.”

Techno nodded, satisfied. “I can respect that. Oh, wait, I’m next up right?”

Techno stood up and took Sam’s place at the front.

“Heyo, people. So, my Quirk’s mostly just a strength enhancer - the only really unique thing about it is that it’s blood-activated, so I had a lotta leeway for how to design my costume.” He tapped the crown on his head. “I went for a royal style, mostly just because I think it looks cool and is distinctive - though the gear has plenty of supporting functions as well.”

Techno unbuckled and took off the pig mask, surprising everyone to see that the crown was apparently attached. “The mask has lenses in the eye-holes that protect against sudden flashes, as well as a built-in communicator. The crown - which is detachable from the mask but I generally keep connected to stop it from falling off - has a tracking chip inside the centre gem.”

He turned the mask around, showing them two small tubes mounted inside the open space of the snout. “Those two tubes are the battery and the projector. The projector gives me a heads-up display in my left eye, showing a bunch of information - most notably my heart rate, blood pressure, and the remaining blood volume in my supply.”

“On that note-” he unclasped the cape and pulled it off to display - “the cape’s primary function is to protect a blood tank that’s molded to fit tightly into the small of my back, making it pretty hard to see under the shirt. The cape’s fireproof and reinforced with graphite alloy, which makes it a bit stiff but lets it disperse impacts really efficiently. It also doubles as heating for either myself or civilians in colder months.”

Techno put the cape back on and laid a hand on his sword hilt. “Everything else is pretty simple - metal studs on the gloves for punching, metal-toed boots for kicking, a sword for slashing. I can also grow claws that can be used in close combat -” he paused for a second to demonstrate, his nails elongating and hardening momentarily - “but I generally prefer to use the sword, since it’s got longer reach and lets me control the distance of a fight better.”

He shrugged. “Besides, if I’m gonna be licking blood off of something, it seems a lot cleaner to do it off a blade than off my fingers.”

Tokage put her hand up. “Question?”

“Yup?”

“Why would you need to drink your opponents’ blood at all? Don’t you have a supply anyway?”

Techno nodded. “Yes, and good question. I’m still doing a lot of research on the effects of my Quirk on fresh blood, since the vast majority of the stuff I use is either defrosted or from a blood bank. For example, when I had some of Vlad Ki- er, Kan-sensei’s blood the other day, I got way more of a power boost than normal - but I’m not sure if that’s because of his Quirk or because it was fresh.”

Tokage nodded, seemingly satisfied. When nobody else stood up to ask anything, Techno returned to his desk, Pony taking his place.

Pony’s outfit was obviously designed to be reminiscent of jockeys, but there was also a surprising amount of thought put into the various straps and buckles on her outfit - which took Wilbur by surprise.

“The straps make it easier for people to hold onto me if I’m carrying ‘em on all fours,” Pony explained. “I’m able to use the strength of my curved legs better by bending my knee forwards rather than backwards, which - ‘cos of how my leg muscles are set up, I guess - lets me stay balanced while carrying more stuff than if I were to stand up straight.”

She demonstrated this ability, her lower leg swinging forward until it was almost flush with her thigh - but in front of her, a disturbing sight to say the least. “I’m able to walk without bending my knees backwards at all, and my pa says that’s how I started walking as a kid! Buuuut it’s bad for my back, so I had to swap to ‘normal’ walking instead.”

Nobody had any questions after that demonstration, all being thoroughly weirded out - with the exception of Charlie, who started trying to recreate the phenomenon with his own body.

Tommy was up next, and showed off his equippable iron armour before explaining how his potions worked in case anyone needed them at a later date. He also gave a basic description of most of his common tools, though he didn’t expect much benefit to come of doing so.

Tetsutetsu and Tokage went in rapid succession, their outfits being extremely simple. Tetsutetsu simply explained that he’d picked his because it “looks manly” and refused to elaborate, while Tokage mentioned that hers - being made of cells grown from her bone marrow - split apart and regenerated with her skin as part of her Quirk.

Charlie, meanwhile, had a lot more explaining to do, as Kodai immediately stuck her hand up to ask a question. “Why are you naked?” she asked, an accusatory tone in her voice. “Isn’t that inappropriate?”

Charlie simply shrugged in response. “I’m made of slime. The more surface area I have to grow bits off of, the better I can use my Quirk. A normal outfit can’t grow extra limbs.”

Kodai nodded resignedly, allowing Charlie to begin explaining his ‘costume’. “These funky metal cylinders come in a bunch of types! The most important one is the heatsink kind - I heat up naturally over time in the sun, and I start boiling off if I take on too much heat, so these bad boys absorb heat across my whole body pretty easily. I have to eject ‘em once they get too hot, of course, but they’re reusable.”

Wilbur raised a hand. “Boiling off? Like, evaporating?” Charlie nodded. “Yeah. It really sucks, since I could absolutely die if I got stuck in the sun too long. But hey, that’s what the heatsinks are for.”

He pulled out one of the can-sized objects, showing off a red button on one side. “Also, some of them are grenades! This here’s a smoke grenade, but sadly I’ve not got permission to use fragmenting or incendiary ammo yet so all I have are these and flashbangs.”

Clay nodded appreciatively at the ordnance as Charlie turned back into a liquid and flowed back into his chair, Wilbur taking his place at the front.

“My Quirk doesn’t have many aspects that can easily be enhanced by support gear,” Wilbur started, “so my costume doesn’t need to be fancy looking. Honestly, given that I’m planning on going underground, I prefer it that way.”

“I explained this to a handful of people earlier, but my costume’s mostly just a really protective set of clothing. It’s fire-resistant, made of a bullet-absorbing Kevlar weave, and still pretty insulating. The only real tech in the clothing itself is the communicator in the beanie.”

Tokage raised her hand. “How are you gonna hit people, then? Even underground heroes need to fight villains sometimes.”

Wilbur nodded, and pulled off the sweater to reveal the gear underneath. “One pistol, two batons, elbow pads. The boots are also shock-absorbing, and apparently the Support Department is trying to figure out a way to make the absorbed shock be releasable.”

Tokage nodded, lowering her hand - it seemed she had had the only question, so Wilbur returned to his seat. They were finally on the last row of the class, which featured at least three outfits that Wilbur was curious about - Clay’s, Monoma’s, and Cara’s.

Clay was up first, and Wilbur noted that he didn’t appear to make a sound when he walked - his shoes were likely rubber-soled, then, maybe even shock-absorbing.

“Hey,” Clay greeted, getting a few grunts in response. “My outfit’s probably got the most stuff on it out of anyone here except for maybe Sam, so this might take a while - sorry.” Flashing an apologetic smile, he dropped the hoodie and pulled off the odd white circle that Wilbur had been curious about earlier - revealing that the dot and line he’d seen were part of a simple smiley-face design.

“This is probably the weirdest part of my costume, so I figured I should explain it first. As you can see, it’s got a head strap and ear covers - because this is actually designed to be a mask with noise-cancelling earphones.”

The class muttered in confusion at that, since the “eyes” of the mask were way out of proportion with his face. Clay flipped the mask over, showing that a contoured piece of fabric-looking material was on the other side.

“It’s also completely opaque, and in fact is designed to completely obstruct my eyesight and hearing when it’s on - like a blindfold, just bigger, better-looking, and made of metal that should be able to block small-calibre bullets.”

He thought for a second. “Actually, it might be easier if I demonstrate this part. Tommy, could you quickly put down a two-block high tower of something soft? Dirt works.”

“Eh? Sure thing, big man, sure thing.” Tommy pulled some dirt out of his inventory and obliged, making a column in the middle of one of the aisles between rows.

Clay slipped the mask back over his eyes, then began spinning around. “As you might guess,” he started, “I’m doing this to make myself dizzy. We can all agree that I’ll have no idea which side of the class the column’s even on, right?”

At the class’ chorus of assent, he continued talking. “You see, this mask is actually really useful for making the most of my Quirk. Normally, I’m only a decent shot. However, using Luck…” He pulled a pistol off of his hip, held it loosely in his right hand, and fired it once as he spun around. The noise was far quieter than Wilbur had expected - he’d only ever heard guns described as ‘deafening’.

The class watched as a puff of dirt flew from the middle of the pillar and hit the ground.

“It hit the pillar, right?” Clay asked.

“Holy shit, yeah!” Tommy called back.

“Good. I’ll do it once more, just to prove it was no fluke - or, rather, that it was a fluke I chose to cause.” Still spinning, Clay swapped hands and fired again as he spun. Once again, the bullet hit the dirt column dead-centre.

Clay stopped spinning, happening to cease his motion pointing directly at an aisle. He walked forward confidently, turning slightly left and right, eventually ending up right next to his desk - where he finally pulled off the mask.

“You guys can come check if you want, I couldn’t see a thing for any of that.”

The class was stunned into silence, though the cogs were turning in Wilbur’s head. “Wait a second,” he asked. “Did you… like, train yourself to be able to act randomly?”

Clay gave a small clap and a delighted smile. “Yes! I didn’t expect anyone to catch onto that. Yes, I’ve done a lot of training - I try to clear my mind of anything, including strategy, location, or any sensory data. Then, I draw on my Quirk and start shooting as randomly as I can, moving at random, kicking out and hitting at random. If I draw on my Quirk strongly and skillfully enough, things should work out so that my shots always land where I want them to, my movement includes dodges and feints, and my attacks end up perfectly timed to hit people.”

The class gasped as Clay continued. “I have no idea what’s going on when I use my Quirk like that, and honestly it’s still new to me - but hey. That’s what the point of the mask is - it’s a bit terrifying to be blind when fighting someone, but it lets me use my Quirk better by avoiding distractions.”

“‘Your eyes can deceive you, don’t trust them’ - or something along those lines?” Wilbur quoted.

Clay nodded. “Pretty much. I am also actually trained in guns, by the way - I’m from Florida, the US state with the third-most guns, so I’ve handled firearms since I was a kid. My Quirk can be used to enhance them in other ways as well - I use it mostly when sniping to give me good wind conditions, but it can be useful with small arms for avoiding jams or just plain accuracy as well.”

With the demonstration over, Clay holstered his pistol and returned to the front of the class to show off the rest of his gear in excruciating detail. In addition to the bulletproof vest and knives, he had three other guns on him - the SMG on his chest being a H&K MP5 chambered in 10mm ammunition. The rifle on his back was an Arctic Warfare Magnum with a multi-mode scope capable of variable zoom up to 27x magnification, as well as both night-vision or thermal vision for low-light or obscured conditions. His pistol (and second pistol), meanwhile, were 9mm Glock 19s.

(He hastened to clarify that the weapons were technically Airsoft replicas, as Japan’s laws banned any weapons besides shotguns and air guns - Pro Heroes could get actual firearms registered as support equipment, but doing so required a hero license to even be considered.)

After Clay stepped down, Monoma was up next.

Much like Techno, Monoma had opted for the reinforced-support-item equivalent of fancy dress - a long-tailed, double-breasted tuxedo with formal pants and shoes. His only real support item was a pair of golden watches attached to a second belt - and he informed the class that the watches served two purposes. Firstly, they helped him to keep track of how long he had left for each of his copied Quirks - secondly, since he could copy up to three Quirks but only had two watches, his enemies would hopefully be misled into underestimating his Quirk count - a wise trick, to be sure.

Cara followed Monoma, though she didn’t have very much to report on. “Support items don’t really work that well with my Quirk, since I need as much exposed wool as possible,” she explained. “So, I just picked something comfy that’s made of my wool. Like I explained earlier, I made it be rainbow-coloured so it’s noticeable and recognisable. There’s also probably some sort of psychological benefit in that bright colours might be able to comfort civilians, but honestly I wasn’t really aiming for that - it just kinda happened, you know?”

Wilbur could certainly see the benefits of that - though he expected that Cara would likely use her wool’s colour-changing properties to get a chameleon effect whenever she needed to be sneaky.

At long last, the class rounded off their costume display with Karl, whose outfit Wilbur recalled glancing at earlier - purple hoodie, long dark pants, knee- and elbow-pads, and sheaths for bladed and blunt weapons. Karl had apparently made his peace with the fact that his Quirk wasn’t very well-suited for extended direct combat, relying instead on support items to effectively fight Quirkless.

After the class split up, Wilbur changed back into his school uniform, lacking any other changes of clothes. Tommy had elected to just stay in his armour out of sheer laziness - which he could do, since it was technically his advanced-composite t-shirt, jeans and sneakers that composed his costume while the armour was his own.

Techno was muttering to himself - or, more accurately, to his voices - as the trio walked around the school searching for the cafeteria, accompanied by the rest of the U-Americans and Tubbo. Wilbur was surprised by the sheer quantity of friends the three of them had managed to accrue by the end of the first day - hell, he himself had barely spoken to anyone, while his younger brothers had made friends with half the class.

The group squeezed themselves into two adjacent benches when they finally found the cafeteria, which was empty save for Lunch Rush, the other half of 1-B and a handful of upperclassmen - 1-A was presumably still off doing something.

Techno leaned forwards in conspiratorial fashion, and whispered to the group. “Alright, guys, so you all know how I’ve got these voices in my head, right?”

At the table’s nods, he continued. “Right, so they’re able to see an awful lot that I’m not really able to, and apparently they were looking over Vlad K- uhh, Kan-sensei’s shoulder while we were in class. It’s possible that they’re trying to bamboozle me, but they’re unanimous in saying that we’re doing battle training against 1-A tomorrow.”

Tommy tilted his head. “What’d that be, exactly? Like, we fight each other all at once?”

Techno shrugged. “Beats me. That’s all they’re telling me.”

Wilbur interjected. “I don’t think they’d want to do a twenty-on-twenty slugfest - both classes have an awful lot of powerful Quirks, and lots of people don’t have great control over theirs. The last thing they’ll want to do is have an open arena - it’d make more sense if they force us to use our brains as well. Quirkless fighting, maybe?”

“Kan-sensei told us we’d be using our costumes,” reminded Clay. “I don’t think it’ll be anything Quirkless.”

“Good point, good point. One on one duels, maybe?”

Cara shuddered. “I hope not. My Quirk’s not great against fire, and Endeavour’s son is in 1-A. Hard pass.”

“Ehhh,” Techno shrugged. “One can always surrender, I suppose. I for one wouldn’t mind a shot at blitzing him.”

Cara rolled her eyes. “Yes, but I for one didn’t place second in the entrance exam, Techno. You’re on a different level to the rest of us - you and Tommy both, honestly.”

Techno opened his mouth to respond, but was interrupted by Tommy. “Well, I won’t deny that I’m ‘built different’ as they say, but I think you could probably beat me if you had the most powerful of the elements on your side, Cara.”

“Elements?”

Tommy grinned. “The element of surprise!”

Techno nodded sagely. “Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt,” he quoted.

Tommy nodded as well. “If you could immobilise me with wool, I wouldn’t be able to move my hands around to use my Quirk - I’m still really clumsy with moving stuff by eyesight alone. Sure, I might be more versatile, but that just means you’re stronger at other things.”

Cara tapped her chin and nodded. “Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Thanks, Tommy.” Turning to Karl, she spoke again. “I bet you could probably do pretty well in duels as well, Karl. You’ll know what the other guy will do before even they know it, right?”

Karl sighed. “In theory, sure. Thing is, I can’t use Timestrange willy-nilly - I get awful side effects from overuse, and my biggest rewind so far is about eight seconds?”

Sam raised a finger. “Speaking of, if I recall rightly you mentioned at some point that that Quirk name is a ‘double reference’ - what’s it a reference to? Nothing springs to mind.”

“Ahhh,” Karl winked, “but that’d ruin the fun now, wouldn’t it?” Shaking his head, Karl shrugged. “Nah, I’ll tell you guys if you want. It’s inspired by two things from pre-Quirk culture, though I’m not sure if one of them also inspired the other or what. The first one is an old videogame series called Life is Strange.”

“Weird name,” Tubbo interjected.

“Maybe,” Karl shrugged, “but the protagonist has pretty much the same power as me - she can hold out her hand and reverse time, but she gets a nosebleed if she overuses it. Only difference is in the game she can also...actually, nah, go play it yourselves.”

“Wasn’t it made, like, centuries ago?” Tommy pointed out.

Karl shrugged again. “That means the copyright on it’s expired, right? I can give you guys a copy if you like. Ten out of ten, honestly. I cried at least twice.”

“What’s the other inspiration?” Wilbur asked.

“Doctor Stephen Strange, the keeper of the Time Stone in the Marvel universe. It’s a bunch of old comics and films, though I only watched the films. Doctor Strange can’t rewind all of time, but he can make time-loops and rewind time on specific objects.”

“Huh. Neat.”

“Yeah.” Karl shrugged. “He’s kinda my inspiration to be a hero, y’know? Max from Life is Strange mostly uses her power to save herself - at the end...nah, no spoilers, actually. She doesn’t really fight much with it, while Doctor Strange fights a whole bunch of stuff with the help of the Time Stone. He’s also got magic, though, so it’s not just time travel stuff.”

Wilbur gave a wistful sigh. “My current inspiration isn't actually a pro hero yet, though he’ll be one pretty soon - Lemillion, a third year here at UA. We’ve both got phasing Quirks, and he’s put a ton of work into becoming something close to unbeatable with it. He’s really amazing. Before I learned about Lemillion...hmm. I think my favourite hero was probably Lokus, a Norwegian hero who did a few years in England while we lived there as part of an EU hero exchange program - he could make portals through surfaces, which I figured was pretty similar to my Quirk.”

Techno raised his hand. “Vlad King, if it wasn’t obvious. First hero I’ve ever heard of with a blood Quirk.”

The group kept chatting for another full hour, until the bell rang for break for the general-education department kids and they decided to vacate the cafeteria to make room.

Techno spotted a familiar face as the group left, and lagged behind to check that he was correct - Ugokuparu had indeed made it into Gen Ed. Techno waved at him as he entered, accompanied by a purple-haired teen with eyebags to rival Techno’s own.

“Hey, Ra-uhhh, Ugokuparu!” he greeted, the split-faced teen’s eyes flashing with recognition as he looked up.

“Denpunoka! Hey! I see you made it into the Hero Course, I’m happy for you.” Techno didn’t fail to miss how Ugokuparu’s eyes fell even as he said the words.

Purple-Hair gave Techno an odd look - something between admiring and a sneer. “So, you’re the Denpunoka I’ve heard so much about?”

Techno quirked an eyebrow. “That is indeed my name, legally speaking - but, please, call me Technoblade. Everyone does.”

The other teen shrugged. “Fair enough. Hitoshi Shinsou. Ugokuparu’s said pretty much nothing but good things.”

Techno shrugged, and scratched the back of his neck awkwardly. “Ehhh, I’m sure they’re exaggerated. I only really did what anyone else would have done.”

Shinsou’s eyes seemed to glaze over somewhat at that, though Techno couldn't identify the emotion. “I’m sure. I need to go get some food, so I’ll leave you two to it.” With that, he stepped forward into the crowd, presumably aiming for the lunch queue.

“Sorry about him,” Ugokuparu offered. “We’re kinda in the same boat - applied for the Hero Course, didn’t get in, went to General Education instead. He says that apparently doing well in the Sports Festival gives everyone another chance to make themselves known, but I don’t think it’ll work for me.”

Techno noticed a common trend with what Wilbur had reported from the aftermath of the Entrance Exam - Ugokuparu seemed to have some issues with self-confidence. Techno tapped his chin in thought. “Well, what’s your Quirk? I could help you train with it, as well as do some physical training in the leadup to the festival.”

Ugokuparu seemed fairly surprised at that. “You sure? I don’t want to be a burden - I didn’t even get any points in the Entrance Exam.”

Techno shrugged. “Your fists, last time I checked, aren’t made of metal - so its not like you’d be very well-suited to fighting robots. If you’ve got some kinda mental Quirk, chances are you won’t get in through the hero course’s practical.”

“Ahhhhh. Yeah. Uh. You were wanting me to explain my Quirk?” At Techno’s nod, he continued. “It’s called Telepearl. As you can...probably see, my skin’s coloured pitch-black on my right and snow-white on my left.”

“Ayup.”

Ugokuparu seemed to shudder, almost imperceptibly - interesting. “Well, I can pull these little pearl-shaped objects from my skin. The black ones - from the black side, that is - they sorta...jump me? Whenever they break and shatter, that is.”

Techno tilted his head. “Like, they teleport you to them when they break?”

Ugokuparu nodded. “Exactly, exactly. The white ones are edible - whenever you pop one in your mouth, you teleport randomly within a few meters. Not super useful, honestly - I was hoping I could learn to control them by getting into the Hero Course, but…”

Techno raised his hands in a calming gesture. “Don’t worry, we’ll work on that. Got Discord?” Ugokuparu nodded, so Techno scribbled his username down on a piece of paper he’d borrowed from Wilbur for that purpose and handed it over. “Friend me when you can, we can talk. See ya.”

Techno raised a hand in farewell and turned away, but Ugokuparu stopped him with a question. “Wait. Why are you wanting to help me?”

Techno shrugged. “You seem like a decent enough person, so I figure you deserve a shot. Besides, I’m sure you still feel pretty guilty about the Entrance Exam situation, even though you shouldn’t - so I figure I may as well try to convince you you’re stronger than you think as well.” Techno turned again and walked off, leaving Ugokuparu in a contemplative silence.