Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The common room was supposed to be quiet enough for homework until Kaminari connected his phone to the television and filled the walls with dragons.

He stood in front of the screen with his whole body lit up by the kind of excitement that made Iida’s shoulders climb before a single rule had been broken.

Footage spilled across the display behind him in sweeping color: armored figures racing along the spine of a ruined cliff, spellfire blooming through a storm-dark sky, a dragon cutting between crumbling towers with the clean, terrible grace of something alive.

Uraraka had meant to keep studying.

Her notebook was open on her lap, one page already half-filled with rescue logistics and the kind of practical hazard calculations Aizawa liked to spring on them without warning, and she had every intention of finishing the next paragraph before dinner.

Then the dragon on the screen folded one wing close and dropped into a vertical dive through a ring of molten light, and the words on her page loosened from their meaning.

Kaminari slapped one hand against the back of the couch, nearly clipping Sero in the ear.

“I’m telling you, this is going to change everything.”

“You said the same thing about the new waffle machine,” Jirou said from the floor, where she was sitting with one knee bent and her bass pick balanced against her thumb.

“Uh, hello! And I was right!” Kaminari pointed at her without looking away from the television.

On the screen, the footage shifted to a player standing in the middle of a glassy lake beneath a broken moon.

A circular targeting field opened under the water, lines of pale light widening in response to the player’s outstretched hand.

The lake rose in pieces around them, slabs of shining water held in the air as if gravity had forgotten what it was supposed to do.

Uraraka’s fingers tightened around her pen before she noticed. Across the room, Bakugou didn’t move.

He had claimed the far end of the couch with his usual territorial commitment, one arm hooked over the back, boots planted, expression arranged into something so aggressively bored it had to have taken effort.

He hadn’t looked at the screen once since Kaminari started talking.

Uraraka only knew because she had made the mistake of checking: his eyes cut up during the lake sequence, quick enough that anyone else might have missed it, then lowered again before Kaminari could turn around and catch him caring about something.

Uraraka looked back down at her notebook and tried not to smile.

Beside the television, Midoriya had already forgotten how close he was standing to the screen. His hands hovered near his chest, fingers moving in little aborted gestures as he watched the player on screen switch from water control to close-range combat without opening a menu.

“It’s interpreting intent through neural response?” he asked, voice picking up speed.

“Or is it mapping the user’s established combat pattern first and then translating that into a class system? Because if the Support Course built this off quirk-behavior profiles, then the adaptive modeling would have to be incredibly specific.”

Kaminari stared blankly at him.

“It makes you a cool wizard, man. That’s all I’ve got.”

Iida adjusted his glasses with a sharp motion.

“This is still an educational tool, Kaminari. Power Loader-sensei’s memo was very clear. The system is designed for tactical simulation, environmental response, and team-combat calibration. It isn’t simply a recreational game.”

Sero leaned farther over the back of the couch.

“So it’s a recreational game with paperwork.”

“It has character classes, mounts,” Mina said, already scrolling on her phone. Her eyes reflected the screen’s color, pink and gold and bright with interest.

“Ooh! And guild raids!”

The footage shifted into a courtyard of black stone, where the sky above it burned orange at the seams, ash drifting in soft ribbons past broken banners and shattered archways.

A party of players moved through the ruins in formation, weapons drawn, cloaks snapping in the wind with enough weight and texture that Uraraka felt the image somewhere low in her stomach.

One player lifted a staff, and the ground beneath a charging monster rippled inward before the creature tore off its feet and hung suspended in a trembling field of light.

Uraraka’s attention caught on the staff before she could make herself look away.

The spell didn’t mirror her quirk in any exact way, but it moved close enough to wake the part of her that was always measuring distance, weight, timing, and release.

The player on-screen didn’t have to fight nausea or count the seconds before their body punished them for pushing too far.

They adjusted pressure, changed direction, and tried again while the ruined sky split open above them like the system had built a whole world around the question she kept asking herself in training: what could she do if the ground answered her a little faster?

The thought pulled at her more than she wanted to admit.

In a place like that, she could test range and force without the real-world risk of dropping a classmate through a building, and somehow even a broken sky could be filed under training if UA stamped the right paperwork over it.

Kaminari lifted his phone higher, as if presenting evidence in court.

“Mei Hatsume’s been calling it the Hyper-Immersive Quirk-Adaptive Tactical Fantasy Combat Baby.”

Kaminari swiped to another screenshot before Iida could object.

Most of the diagram looked like a crime against readable design, arrows and exclamation points jammed around Mei’s handwritten labels, but Uraraka could pick out enough to understand why Midoriya had gone quiet with interest: adaptive terrain mesh, field-state memory, non-scripted enemy logic, skill-weight feedback.

The system wasn’t only dressing a training map in fantasy textures.

It remembered where players stepped, what they avoided, which skills they overused, and how quickly they adapted when the world pushed back.

From the kitchen entrance, Shinsou made a quiet sound that might have been a laugh if anyone had been brave enough to accuse him of it.

He came in with a mug in one hand, hair still damp from the showers, and drifted toward the far counter instead of joining the crowd.

Uraraka watched Shinsou pass behind Bakugou’s end of the couch, but her attention snagged on Bakugou before she could help it.

He looked bored from a distance, all slouched shoulders and narrowed eyes, but the boredom cracked in tiny, telling places.

His fingers stopped tapping against the couch when the dragon banked through a canyon of black stone.

His jaw shifted when the rider leaned low over its neck.

When the creature folded its wings and dropped through smoke like a blade, Bakugou’s eyes followed the movement before his scowl caught up and dragged them away.

Kaminari saw enough to grin.

“That one. Barbarian King class. Hits like a raid boss, probably yells at locked doors until they open. Bakugou, that’s basically you with fur trim.”

Kirishima laughed from the armchair.

“Come on, man. You gotta admit it looks cool.”

Bakugou’s mouth curled like the word cool had personally insulted him. “Looks stupid.”

Mina leaned over the couch, eyes bright.

“You can have a dragon~”

His gaze flicked back to the screen, fast and hungry enough that Uraraka’s pen stilled between her fingers. The dragon filled the display, all red wing and firelit teeth, and Bakugou went rigid in the precise way he did when he wanted something and hated that the wanting had shown.

He clicked his tongue and shoved one hand deeper into his pocket.

“Tch. Fine. If you idiots get off my back.”

Kaminari’s feral grin spread. “That’s a yes.”

“That’s me ending this conversation.”

In first year, Uraraka might have believed the slouch, the scowl, the way he looked anywhere except at the thing everyone else was excited about.

Now she could see the small evidence beneath it, the angle of his attention and the way his shoulders stayed loose without ever disengaging.

He was clocking the movement system, enemy response, and combat weight while acting like the entire conversation was wasting the oxygen in the room.

It was familiar enough that warmth and amusement moved together through her chest. Then he looked at her, quick enough that anyone else would have missed it, but she had already learned the shape of Bakugou trying not to be caught.

His gaze cut across the room, sharp and accusing, and found her smiling before she could hide it behind her water bottle.

For an instant his scowl deepened, almost embarrassed, almost warning her not to make anything of it. She took a sip anyway, and his eyes dropped to the bottle, then back to her mouth, and the contact broke so fast it left a faint buzzing awareness behind.

She looked back at the television, carefully casual.

On screen, the party entered a ruined citadel, and system text flashed across the bottom of the footage.

Dynamic Scaling: Active

Midoriya made a small noise that was almost inhuman.

“It adjusts in real time?”

Kaminari nodded so hard his hair bounced.

“Enemy routes, boss phases, environmental hazards. Hatsume said it learns how teams fight and then tries to ruin their lives.”

“That sounds unsafe,” Iida said.

“That sounds amazing,” Kirishima said at the same time.

“It has neurological strain limits,” Midoriya said, already reading off his phone.

“Session caps, pain dampening, emergency ejection, vestibular correction, and quirk-behavior safeguards. Aizawa-sensei had to approve our access.”

The words shifted the air around them, easing some of the reckless excitement into something closer to attention. Aizawa approving something meant it had passed through several layers of suspicion first; he’d never allow a new Support Course prototype near them unless he thought it could make them better, or at least reveal the places where they were sloppy.

Uraraka could already imagine his face during the pitch, half-buried in his capture weapon, eyes flat while Mei vibrated through a twenty-minute explanation of fantasy avatars and combat feedback loops.

“All Might signed off too,” Kaminari added. “He said it was a chance to explore alternate forms of heroic spirit.”

Sero tilted his head. “I mean, if All Might said it was a good idea I’m hard-pressed to disagree.”

Mina leaned over the couch, chin propped on both hands as the footage continued.

“So when do we get to try it?”

Kaminari’s grin turned victorious. Iida’s shoulders rose another inch.

“Tomorrow night,” Kaminari said. “Common room. Full class party access. We all start together.”

Kirishima punched one fist into his palm.

“Man, this is gonna be so cool.”

Sero was already asking whether the system had grapple mechanics. Jirou wanted to know if sound-based attacks existed or if she was doomed to become a lute bard against her will.

Mina had begun scrolling through leaked class descriptions with a seriousness she usually reserved for outfits and gossip. Midoriya looked like someone had handed him a second internship. Uraraka let the room’s excitement move around her while she capped her pen and set it against the crease of her notebook.

Tomorrow night should have landed as a simple thrill: full class party access, everyone piling into the same new world together, the dorm loud with plans before any of them had even put on a headset.

She loved that kind of chaos.

She loved the way their class could turn a school-approved exercise into overlapping voices, half-made strategies, and laughter bright enough to make everyone forget they were tired.

Only the word start sat wrong.

For everyone else, tomorrow would be the first step into the system. For Uraraka, it was already threaded through late nights, private party invites, and the shape of Bakugou’s voice in her ear.

She already knew the weight of a staff settling into her hands, smooth wood against her palm and a carved grip worn by use the avatar had earned one dungeon at a time.

She knew the faint tug of mana gathering behind her focus, different from her quirk but close enough to make her breath catch the first time she learned how to pull the ground out from under an enemy.

She knew Bakugou’s voice through the private party channel, rough with concentration and close in her ear even when his avatar was halfway across a field. Left side. Two more spawning.

Her answer had come out breathless because she had been laughing and trying not to sound like it. I see them.

In the memory, ash wolves broke through the rain-dark brush with their jaws open and their paws tearing sparks off the stone. Uraraka’s staff had moved before she finished thinking, gravity folding where she placed it, the field tightening just as Bakugou launched through the opening.

His dragon’s flame cut bright across the wet ground, and for one impossible stretch of combat all three of them moved like they had agreed on the same timing without needing to speak. Her thumb pressed lightly against the edge of her notebook.

No one in the common room knew why the word start made Uraraka’s face warm.

They hadn’t seen that first night after the calibration demo, when she had logged back in for ten more minutes with the skill tree and found Bakugou standing near a dungeon gate in beginner armor, glaring at a quest board like it had personally insulted him.

They hadn’t heard them argue over whether teaming up counted as convenience or desperation before the system paired them for a two-player ruin and locked the gate behind them.

Clearing it together should have been the strangest part.

What stayed with her was the way they kept going afterward, night after night, until the private party invite became easier to accept than explain.

Kaminari restarted the footage from the beginning, narrating over it now for Sato and Shouji, who had come in halfway through and missed the first dragon dive.

The common room brightened with fresh noise.

Someone called dibs on healer. Someone else objected on the grounds that nobody in their class had enough self-preservation to keep a healer alive.

Iida began listing session guidelines before anyone had officially asked him to.

Bakugou stood. The motion cut through the edge of Uraraka’s attention before she could stop it.

He moved off the couch with the same careless force he did everything, one hand shoved into his pocket, expression set like he had endured the conversation through sheer moral superiority.

“Have fun getting wiped,” he said.

Uraraka kept her face angled down, but the smile slipped out anyway, small and helpless and warm around the edges.

Shinsou had taken the open seat at the end of the table at some point, mug held loosely between both hands.

His eyes moved from her mouth to the hall Bakugou had disappeared down, then back again with the slow, unimpressed calm of someone watching a trap close.

Uraraka straightened. “What?”

He took a sip of tea instead of answering, which was somehow worse. She narrowed her eyes at him, but he had already looked away, and there was no use interrogating Shinsou when he had decided to become furniture.

Across the room, Kaminari started the footage again, and the dragon dove through spellfire while everyone leaned closer.

Uraraka looked down at her notebook, but the rescue calculations had lost their shape completely.

Tomorrow, the class would log in together and see the fantasy world properly for the first time, with its broken citadels and adaptive dungeons and wind that felt almost real when it moved through your cloak.

Tomorrow, Bakugou would have to pretend he had never touched the game in his life until his avatar loaded in with a level, a weapon, and a dragon that absolutely knew better.

Her stomach gave a small, nervous flip.

She told herself it was because the system was exciting, because the class would be chaotic, because keeping track of everyone during a dungeon would be a tactical nightmare and Midoriya would definitely try to analyze enemy behavior while something was actively trying to eat him.

The television flashed bright as the footage reached the boss arena.

Uraraka watched the simulated sky split open over the ruins, and the smile she had been fighting softened before she could stop it.

By the end of the next day, the common room had become something between a staging area and a disaster waiting for permission.

Headsets lined the low table in two careful rows, their padded straps adjusted and readjusted under Iida’s supervision until even Kaminari stopped touching them just to see if he could make Iida’s eyebrow twitch.

Cables fed into the support unit Mei Hatsume had delivered after lunch, a sleek black tower with too many glowing indicators and one handwritten sticker slapped crookedly across the side.

BABY #47: DO NOT KICK UNLESS NECESSARY

Nobody knew what counted as necessary, and nobody wanted to be responsible for finding out. Uraraka sat near the arm of the couch with her hands folded loosely around her headset.

The outer shell was cool beneath her fingers, smooth except for the small grip ridges along the side where the neural band clicked into place.

It looked exactly the same as the unit she had used in the Support Course lab and nothing like it at all.

That one had been hers in a quiet room with dimmed lights, Power Loader standing nearby with a clipboard while Hatsume circled the calibration chair and muttered about feedback sensitivity.

This one sat in the middle of the dorm, surrounded by classmates, snack wrappers, Kaminari’s overconfidence, and Mina trying to convince Jirou that “battle bard” could absolutely be made stylish if she committed to the aesthetic.

With everyone packed around the table and Mina trying to style Jirou into a battle bard, it should have felt less serious than the Support Course lab.

Somehow, the noise only made Uraraka more aware of how much she had to hide.

“Everyone will complete the neural calibration prompts before entering the shared instance,” Iida said, standing in front of the television with his tablet in hand. He had been saying variations of the same thing for ten minutes.

“No one’s to bypass safety checks. No one’s to alter pain-dampening thresholds. No one’s to accept unknown party invitations from outside the approved UA training server.”

Kaminari lifted a hand. “What if the unknown party invitation is from someone cool?”

“Have you not been taught stranger danger?”

Sero leaned over the back of the couch, already wearing his headset pushed up on his hair like goggles. He squinted into the dark visor as if the fantasy world might load early out of pity.

“Are we supposed to see anything yet?”

Kirishima laughed and adjusted the strap across the back of his head.

“Man, I’m pumped. This is gonna be like a team raid.”

Uraraka smiled despite herself and looked down at the headset again.

Across the table, Bakugou picked his up. He did it like he was handling equipment before a practical exam, not like someone getting ready to enter a fantasy game with a dragon class he had definitely pretended not to want.

He checked the straps once, thumbed the side control, and set the neural band in place with a practiced efficiency that made Uraraka’s heart give a small, stupid tap against her ribs.

She looked away before anyone could follow her gaze. Mina was already dangerous enough.

Kaminari squinted across the table while Bakugou adjusted the neural band with suspiciously practiced hands.

“Hold on. Did you read the manual?”

Bakugou didn’t look up. “Some of us can operate equipment without chewing on it first.”

Kirishima laughed, but his grin softened when he caught the efficient way Bakugou moved through the setup screen.

“Guess we won’t be stuck in the tutorial too long, then.”

Bakugou’s thumb paused against the side control before he forced it moving again.

“Depends how useless the rest of you are.”

She reached for her water bottle and took a drink, using the motion to hide her mouth.

The water was colder than she expected, and it helped bring her face back under control, even if the smile still wanted to give her away.

Shinsou dropped onto the couch beside Kaminari with the kind of posture that said he had come only because Aizawa had made this count as tactical participation. His headset rested in his lap.

“If we all die in the tutorial, does that count as class bonding?”

Kaminari clapped a hand over his heart.

“If I die in the tutorial, I want everyone to know I didn’t go down without a fight.”

Midoriya barely heard them. He sat cross-legged near the coffee table, notebook open beside the headset he still hadn’t put on, his page crowded with arrows, class-name branches, and two separate lists labeled probable and concerning.

“If the adaptive system builds around quirk habits,” he said, mostly to himself, “then the class selection screen might be less of a choice and more of a behavioral translation. That could explain why Hatsume kept emphasizing profile calibration.”

The laughter that followed eased something in Uraraka’s chest until the dorm felt like itself again: their loud, overprepared, chaotic common room, where Kaminari always talked too much, Iida cared hard enough to become strict, Mina could turn any new activity into a social event, and Midoriya’s excitement spilled over before he knew how to catch it.

Then Aizawa’s voice came through the television speakers.

“All right, problem children.”

Around Uraraka, the room snapped into a very specific kind of order.

Aizawa wasn’t in the common room, but his image appeared on the screen through a live support feed, yellow sleeping bag visible around his shoulders even though he was supposedly supervising from the staff room.

Present Mic leaned into frame behind him and waved with both hands.

“YEAH! Fantasy hero time!”

Aizawa closed his eyes as if the words had caused him physical pain.

“All safety restrictions are active,” he said.

“Session cap is two hours. The system will eject you automatically if neural stress crosses the threshold. If any of you try to disable the restrictions, Hatsume has been authorized to lock your character in tutorial jail indefinitely.”

Kaminari slowly lowered his hand into the silence.

Aizawa’s gaze narrowed. “Good.”

Present Mic popped back into frame.

“Have fun in there, listeners! Remember, no shame in the healer build!”

Aizawa continued. “Power Loader and Hatsume are monitoring the prototype server. Treat it like training. I expect reports on tactical carryover by Monday.”

The feed cut, and Kaminari waited until the screen went dark before whispering, “Tutorial jail.”

Mina whispered back, “I kind of want to see it.”

Iida clapped his hands once, crisp enough to pull them all back.

“All right. Headsets on. Confirm when your calibration window appears.”

Uraraka lifted hers. The padding settled around her temples with a familiar pressure, and the common room narrowed through the visor’s darkened edge.

Sound softened, not gone but rounded at the corners, as the neural band hummed lightly against the back of her head. The support unit gave a low mechanical pulse from the table.

A menu opened against the black.

UA Tactical Fantasy Simulation Server

User Recognition: Uraraka Ochako

Neural Calibration: Stable

Vestibular Correction: Active

Pain Dampening: Locked

Avatar Sync Available

She swallowed. Around the room, voices began to overlap.

“Calibration up,” Kirishima said.

“Ready,” Iida answered.

“Mine says something about audio resonance,” Jirou said. “Ugh, if this makes me a bard…”

Uraraka kept her hands steady on the headset. Her own menu shifted.

Existing Avatar Detected

ZeroGMochi — Level 10

High Arcanist

Gravitational Magus Discipline

Her stomach flipped. The text had never looked so loud.

She wanted to ask the system if it could maybe be less honest in front of people. It wasn’t as if anyone else could see her private menu, but the knowledge sat warm in her face anyway, like she had opened a notebook and found all her secret thoughts written in bold.

She dismissed the profile window quickly and selected shared spawn access.

Across the table, Bakugou had gone quiet in a way that pressed at the edge of Uraraka’s awareness.

She didn’t turn her head, but the room had a way of telling on him. The lack of scoffing. The absence of some rude comment about everyone taking too long.

The faint click of his finger against the side control as he moved through a menu she already knew he had seen before.

They were entering as a class this time, but it still felt strange not seeing his usual invite to proceed as a private duo.

There was no reason for him to send one. No reason for her to expect the small notification that usually appeared seconds after they logged in at night.

The first time he had sent one, she had stared at it for so long the system warned her the invitation would expire.

When she finally accepted, his voice had crackled through the channel with immediate irritation. You fall asleep? I was deciding whether I wanted to reward your manners. You wanted the dungeon clear.

You wanted my crowd control. A pause. Then, grudgingly, Tch. Ready up. The memory brushed through her and left warmth behind.

“Uraraka?”

She startled lightly.

Iida had turned toward her, one hand braced over his own headset. “Calibration?”

“Oh.” She straightened. “Stable. Ready.”

“Excellent.”

The final confirmation chimed. The shift built gradually, the common room seeming to slip out from under her before it disappeared completely.

The headset’s pressure dissolved into a smooth, weightless dark. The couch beneath her vanished.

The faint smell of snacks, laundry detergent, and Kaminari’s too-sweet energy drink slipped out of reach.

For a moment, there was only the soft internal hum of the system linking sensation to avatar, body to intention, breath to a world that didn’t exist until it touched her.

When her boots met grass, wind moved across her cheeks as Uraraka opened her eyes.

The sky above the spawn field spread wide and impossible, painted in late-afternoon gold with bands of drifting cloud stretched thin over distant mountains.

A ring of standing stones rose around the clearing, each carved with soft blue runes that pulsed as new players arrived in bursts of light. Grass bent beneath her boots, individual blades brushing the hem of her skirt with convincing softness.

Somewhere nearby, water moved over rocks, and the air carried the clean scent of moss, sun-warmed stone, and something faintly sweet from the flowers clustered along the path. Even after weeks of playing, the first breath always got her.

Her real lungs knew better. Her real body was still sitting in the dorm with a headset strapped over her face. But the system gave the world texture with such careful devotion that her senses accepted the lie before her thoughts caught up.

The wind touched the curve of her ear. Her cloak shifted against her shoulders. The staff formed beneath her fingers, solid and smooth, the grain worn along the grip by use the avatar had earned one dungeon at a time. A soft chime sounded.

ZeroGMochi

Level 10 — High Arcanist

Gravitational Magus Discipline

The profile window appeared at the edge of her vision, mercifully small.

She dismissed it with a practiced flick of her fingers, then immediately tried to make the gesture look clumsy while hoping no one had been watching too closely.

Light burst beside her, and Mina stumbled into existence with a delighted shriek.

“Oh my gosh!”

Her avatar finalized in layers of rose-gold armor that hugged close enough for movement and flared dramatically wherever the system had decided style mattered more than practicality. A short cape snapped behind her shoulders, twin curved blades settled at her hips, and the edges of both weapons shimmered with an acid-green sheen. Her horns remained, worked seamlessly into the fantasy design with little gold cuffs at the base.

Mina spun once, cape flying out around her. “I look incredible.”

“You really do,” Uraraka said, laughing. “The system figured out your style to a ‘T’.”

Mina’s eyes swept over Uraraka in return, brightening at the pink cloak, the staff, and the soft skirted layers of her fantasy outfit.

“Excuse me, look at you! You’re adorable. Very magical forest heroine. Very cottagecore but can absolutely destroy someone.”

“That’s... Thanks?” Uraraka said, but her smile came too quickly to hide.

More arrival lights sparked across the field before Mina could say anything worse.

The rest of the class materialized in quick, colorful bursts: Kirishima in red, stone-edged armor with a battered shield across his back; Sero in fitted leather with hookblades and long ribbon-like grapples coiled at his hips; Kaminari in storm-marked light armor with an instrument that looked ready to electrocute him; Jirou in dark traveling gear with a stringed weapon humming low at her back.

Shinsou appeared near the edge of the clearing in violet-gray layers that moved like smoke, while Yaoyorozu’s robes settled around her in deep blue and white with a slim spellbook floating at her side.

Tokoyami arrived in black armor that feathered at the shoulders, every line of him dramatic enough that Dark Shadow seemed personally pleased.

Midoriya loaded in near the standing stones and opened three menus before his boots had fully settled in the grass.

His outfit was somewhere between scholar and fighter, green cloak pinned at the shoulder, bracers etched with circuit-like runes. A set of floating panels arranged themselves around him as if the system had taken one look at his personality and surrendered.

“Oh,” he breathed.

“There are subclass trees. Wait, no, not just subclasses. Auxiliary proficiencies, affinity branches, party synergy passives—look, if someone takes cartography and someone else unlocks environmental reading, the map might populate faster. And this one says resonance casting can chain with physical-impact classes if the timing window is under point-eight seconds, which means the system isn’t only tracking skills, it’s tracking how we use them together—”

“Midoriya,” Tokoyami said, solemn as a funeral bell, “even the darkness asks that you breathe.”

Midoriya froze with three translucent panels still hovering around his shoulders.

“Right. Sorry. Breathing.”

The laugh that moved through the clearing gave Uraraka enough cover to test her own cloak with a careful turn and lift her staff as if its balance surprised her. The staff knew her hand well enough that she had to keep her grip loose so no one else would notice.

Then the ground shuddered, and red light cut through the blue.

Bakugou appeared out of it like the system had taken one look at him and decided subtlety would be insulting. His boots struck the grass with more weight than anyone else’s, the landing sending a faint pulse through the clearing before the effect faded.

Black and crimson armor formed over him in layered pieces, reinforced bracers locking over his forearms, a ragged cape settling behind him beneath a rough fur mantle.

Leather straps crossed his chest, and a heavy weapon settled across his back, broad-bladed and brutal, built less like a sword and more like a threat with a handle.

The nameplate flickered overhead.

GroundZero

Level 10 — Dragon-King Vanguard

Draconic Companion Bond

His avatar’s hair remained just as impossible as his real one, because of course it did, and warmth betrayed her before caution could catch up.

Uraraka forgot she was supposed to be acting like she had never seen it before. The fur mantle made him look broader than he already was, all sharp angles and rough edges under the red fall of his cape. It should have been ridiculous.

It should have looked like the system had dressed his temper in fantasy armor and called it a class feature.

Instead, Uraraka’s first thought was that it suited him too well. He looked like the kind of person a story sent into the woods with a sword too large for anyone reasonable and expected the monsters to be afraid first.

When the dragon landed beside him, the clearing quieted around her in a ripple: Kaminari’s voice cut off, Sero lowered the grapple he had been about to fire at another innocent tree, Mina’s eyes widened, and even Midoriya looked up from his menus.

The dragon unfolded from a coil of ember-red light, scales locking into place like heated armor.

It was smaller than the battle form Uraraka had seen in higher-level fields, but still large enough that its head reached Bakugou’s shoulder when it straightened.

Smoke curled from its nostrils. A faint gold glow moved beneath the darker plates along its neck and chest, pulsing like banked fire. Its eyes opened and went straight to Uraraka.

Her breathing stalled in the most incriminating way possible.

The dragon’s head tilted, recognition bright in its golden stare, and every thought in her head rushed toward the same useless conclusion: it had better not.

Bakugou’s gaze snapped toward it with immediate warning.

“Oi!”

The dragon moved, and Mina made a sound that lived somewhere between a gasp and a squeal.

It ignored Kirishima’s awed “whoa,” ignored Kaminari backing up as if respect and fear had tangled in his feet, ignored Midoriya whispering something about companion AI bonding.

It crossed the clearing with unhurried certainty, carrying its familiar heat with it before Uraraka could think of a normal way to react.

Its claws pressed into the grass with careful, deliberate weight, wings tucked close as it lowered its head toward her hands.

Golden eyes fixed on her face with far too much recognition for something everyone else was supposed to believe she had just met.

Uraraka kept her fingers wrapped around her staff.

The dragon huffed, warm breath stirring the hem of her cloak and lifting the loose hair near her cheek.

Mina clasped both hands under her chin. “Ochako.”

Uraraka glanced at her and immediately regretted it.

“Aww!” Mina’s expression went bright enough to be dangerous.

“It likes you.”

Bakugou stalked over, cape snapping behind him, and glared down at the dragon.

“Oi. Quit showing off for strangers.”

The dragon’s eyes narrowed like it understood every word and disagreed with all of them.

Kaminari leaned closer, grinning. “Bro, your dragon likes Uraraka more than you.”

“It has bad judgment,” Bakugou snapped.

The dragon answered by pushing its head more firmly under Uraraka’s hand.

Her resolve went with it. She let her fingers settle over its snout, light enough to pass for cautious curiosity while still giving the dragon the greeting it wanted.

“Hey, you,” she murmured, soft enough that it could have been for any cute animal approaching her.

“Behaving today?”

The dragon’s eyes half-lidded with shameless speed, pleased in a way that was far too familiar, and its head tipped into her touch until her knuckles brushed the soft heat beneath one horn.

Bakugou stared at the contact like betrayal had grown wings and crawled directly into her hand.

Mina’s gaze moved between Bakugou and Uraraka with growing interest. Uraraka could feel it, the slow assembling of evidence, but she refused to look directly at her.

A bright chime saved her, ringing across the clearing, followed by a translucent window that opened in front of the group.

Party Training Instance Available

Ashfall Citadel

Recommended Level: 1–8

Dynamic Scaling: Active

Objective: Clear the outer citadel and defeat the Ashfall Sentinel

Party Size: 10

Instructor Monitoring: Enabled

Kaminari clapped his hands together. “Yes! Dungeon time!”

Midoriya leaned forward, already reading the fine print.

“Recommended level one to eight. Since the party size is larger than standard, enemy density might increase. Dynamic scaling could also adjust based on our combined stats and combat efficiency.”

Mina tilted her head. “So if someone here’s secretly good, it gets harder for all of us?”

Uraraka felt the back of her neck go hot.

Bakugou clicked his tongue. “Then keep up.”

Kaminari turned toward him with sudden alarm.

“Wait, no, hold on. If we just run in without knowing what anyone’s skills do, we’re absolutely dying in there. Like, cinematic tragedy. Beautiful outfits, terrible teamwork, instant wipe.”

Kirishima squinted at the small nameplate over Bakugou’s head.

“Hold on. Level ten?”

The clearing quieted around Uraraka while Mina’s eyes flew to Bakugou’s nameplate, then immediately to hers with a speed and sharpness that made Uraraka realize her own had appeared too.

ZeroGMochi

Level 10 — High Arcanist

Gravitational Magus Discipline

Hagakure’s voice popped up from somewhere near Yaoyorozu’s shoulder.

“Wait, Ochako, you’ve played this before?”

“Ah—well—maybe just a little,” Uraraka said, which was technically true if everyone agreed not to define little too carefully.

Sato brightened. “That’s actually great, right? We have someone who knows how the dungeons work.”

“Level ten means she has completed multiple early quests,” Midoriya said, eyes brightening with the kind of understanding no one had asked him to have.

“Depending on experience scaling, probably at least two dungeon clears, or several side quest chains with combat objectives.”

“Maybe she’s naturally gifted,” Mina said, voice sweet enough to be criminal.

Uraraka laughed, and it came out a little too high. “Or maybe the slimes gave me a buffer.”

Bakugou snorted. “She got lucky.”

Uraraka’s head turned before she could stop it. He wasn’t looking at her, but his mouth had the faintest edge of something smug at one corner.

She remembered the rain-dark forest instance too clearly: ash wolves hanging upside down over a ravine, her staff humming under both hands, Bakugou staring at the suspended pack with open, furious approval.

Lucky? she had asked then, breathless around a laugh.

Don’t get cocky.

You’re smiling.

I’m not.

He had turned away so fast the dragon, still barely larger than a fox back then, had chirped at him in confusion.

In the clearing, Uraraka tapped the base of her staff against the grass once.

“Sure.”

Mina’s eyes narrowed with delight.

Bakugou ignored her. Iida looked genuinely distressed now, which made Uraraka feel a little bad.

“If some of us have prior experience, it may affect the dungeon calibration. We should disclose all relevant combat data before entering.”

Bakugou made a face. “Who cares, get going or I’m leaving you all behind.”

Iida’s mouth tightened. “Dungeon or not, the calibration data still matters.”

Bakugou looked toward the gate. “Then collect it on the way.”

The dragon nudged Uraraka’s elbow again.

She kept her hand firmly on her staff this time, because Mina was still watching and because Bakugou looked like he might actually combust if his own companion kept making this worse.

The dragon huffed, deeply unimpressed with her restraint. The party confirmation window expanded.

Accept Instance Queue?

Readiness markers began lighting up across the party list in quick succession as everyone confirmed, some faster than others.

Midoriya’s stayed gray long enough for three separate menus to open and close around him before it finally turned green.

Across the clearing, Bakugou accepted without looking at her.

GroundZero — Ready

The familiar sight made something settle in her. Uraraka accepted.

ZeroGMochi — Ready

The transfer hit more cleanly than the first login, a quick pull of light through her ribs before the spawn field dropped away and Ashfall Citadel took its place.

Cold stone replaced grass under her boots. The air cooled with it, carrying ash, old metal, and the low groan of a fortress that felt too large to be a beginner dungeon.

Black rock rose around them in broken layers, the outer walls jagged against a sky with orange fire glowing under the clouds. Somewhere deeper inside, a chain dragged once across stone and went still.

Kaminari swallowed audibly.

“For a beginner dungeon, this is doing a bit too much.”

Hagakure’s voice floated from behind Yaoyorozu, quieter than before but still thrilled.

“Wow, look at this place! This is gorgeous.”

“It’s also responsive,” Midoriya murmured, turning slowly to track the way the ash curved around his hand when he moved.

“The particle field reacts to motion.”

Sero took a cautious step forward, boots scraping over loose grit.

“They had to have spent forever on the haptic feedback. You can feel the rocks.”

Jirou looked up at the broken towers looming overhead.

“I kind of hate that it has atmosphere.”

Shinsou adjusted the cuff of one glove, gaze moving over the dark openings along the wall.

“Atmosphere usually means ambush points. Try not to admire it too hard.”

Yaoyorozu stepped to the front with immediate purpose, her spellbook floating open beside one shoulder.

“Everyone, we will proceed in formation. Front line advances first. Ranged support maintains visibility. No one triggers suspicious objects without group consent.”

Kaminari, whose hand had been drifting toward a glowing urn near the wall, pulled it back.

“No one,” Iida echoed.

Uraraka adjusted her grip on her staff and let her gaze move over the entry corridor ahead.

The dungeon had changed around them. The shape was the same as the version she and Bakugou had cleared three nights ago, but the details had shifted to accommodate the larger party.

The corridor ahead narrowed sharply, and the system adjusted before anyone could ask how a dragon was supposed to fit.

Ember light rippled across the dragon’s body. Its larger combat form compressed smoothly, wings folding tight as its scales shifted inward until it stood no bigger than a housecat with horns. It shook itself, sneezed a tiny puff of smoke, and looked deeply offended by the indignity.

Several people reacted at once.

Kirishima leaned in with open delight. “It gets smaller?”

Hagakure gasped. “That’s so cute!”

Koda, who had been quiet near the back of the formation, tilted his head as if listening.

“He says the corridors here are annoying to adjust to.”

Bakugou’s head snapped toward him. “Tch. Don’t translate it.”

The dragon ignored all of them and trotted straight to Uraraka, rearing up against the side of her cloak with its claws hooked carefully in the fabric.

Mina pressed both hands to her mouth. “Ochako, it’s asking for you to pick it up! How adorable!”

“It is not asking,” Bakugou said.

Koda’s hesitant glance toward him did not help. “He actually is…”

Uraraka bent before the moment could become any more obvious. She slid one hand beneath the dragon’s warm body and lifted, letting it settle across her shoulders with practiced ease. Its wings folded flat along her collar, tail curling around her satchel strap as its narrow head tucked beneath her cheek.

Mina leaned closer, eyes glittering. “Hmm. That looks pretty comfortable for someone who just met you.”

“Really? I’d say it’s using me for warmth,” Uraraka said, trying to keep her voice even.

Mina’s smile sharpened. “From the fire dungeon?”

“Maybe it’s sensitive.”

The dragon chirped like it approved of the answer.

Bakugou’s jaw worked once. “Move before I leave all of you here.”

The first stretch of Ashfall Citadel closed around them in a narrowing throat of black stone.

Their footsteps overlapped strangely, some heavy with armor, some light against the grit, some echoing ahead as if the dungeon wanted them to hear their own hesitation.

Blue flames along the walls dimmed when they passed, then brightened again behind them, sealing off the entrance in slow increments.

Uraraka walked near the middle, staff balanced in one hand, dragon draped across her shoulders like a living scarf.

The dragon’s heat seeped through her cloak, steady against the side of her neck, and every time its tail shifted around her satchel strap Bakugou’s gaze cut back like he had felt it himself.

He kept walking ahead of her, but his path changed by inches whenever the corridor narrowed, his shoulder angling first toward broken stone, then toward an open archway, then toward the dark gaps where enemies might come through.

It looked like impatience if someone didn’t know better.

Uraraka knew better, which was quickly becoming a problem. She tried to look like she was taking it all in for the first time.

That became harder when the first trap groove appeared beneath a thin scatter of ash.

Bakugou stepped over it without breaking stride, and Uraraka moved half a step right before she reached it.

The quiet held until Sero, walking behind them, paused and looked down.

“Uh. Is that a trap?” The groove snapped open, and iron spikes shot upward from the floor in a clean, vicious row, stopping exactly where Bakugou’s boot would have been if he had kept to the center line.

Kaminari yelped. “Oh, come on.”

Iida’s voice sharpened. “No one move carelessly.”

Bakugou glanced back over his shoulder. “Pay attention, stupid.”

“Dude, it was under ash!”

Mina’s gaze dropped to Uraraka’s feet, then flicked toward the place Bakugou had stepped over without hesitation. Uraraka became very interested in the wall. The dragon’s tail curled tighter around her satchel strap, warm and smug against her shoulder.

After that, the group slowed. Yaoyorozu kept the formation from collapsing into a crowd, Iida echoed her instructions with increasing urgency, and Midoriya kept finding new reasons to inspect scorch marks, broken stone, and the spacing between the wall braziers.

Kaminari complained until Jirou rested her hand on the neck of her instrument and suggested she could test funeral music early.

Uraraka let the noise move around her while her attention stayed on the dungeon. The corridor was giving them too much silence between the guttering blue flames, and along the left side, the ash near the dark openings shifted inward, disturbed by movement the system hadn’t yet revealed.

Her fingers adjusted on the staff.

Bakugou moved three paces ahead, slightly left of center, far enough forward to irritate any sensible formation and exactly far enough for her first field to catch the corridor bend without clipping the party. He didn’t look back. He had already put himself where her spell would need him.

The nearest flame went out.

Shapes spilled from the dark openings in a rush of stone-black limbs and split jaws.

The creatures came from too many angles for the class to settle cleanly: one slammed into Iida’s shield, another skittered along the wall toward Kaminari, and a third dropped from above with its mouth stretched wide.

The first reaction was messy. Kaminari’s lightning struck a brazier instead of a target and sent blue fire flaring up the wall. Mina caught one creature with her blade, then hopped back when her own acid effect spread farther than she expected.

Sero’s grapple snapped toward movement, caught a pillar, and ripped loose a chunk of stone that nearly clipped Shinsou on the way down.

“Watch out,” Shinsou said, ducking with irritating calm.

Iida braced his shield as two creatures slammed into it, boots grinding back an inch under the impact.

“Formation!”

The word snapped through the corridor, but the formation had already buckled.

Bakugou moved into the gap. His weapon came off his back in a heavy arc, catching the first creature mid-lunge and driving it into the floor hard enough to burst the body into dark fragments.

The dragon slipped from Uraraka’s shoulders in the same instant, expanding before it hit the ground, wings flaring through the corridor with a rush of heated air.

Uraraka planted her staff. The familiar pressure answered before thought finished forming.

 A pale targeting ring opened along the floor ahead of Bakugou, its edge threading between his boots and the creature pack without touching him.

Her mana bar appeared at the edge of her vision, full and steady.

She pulled from it carefully, shaping the spell narrow enough for the corridor, dense enough to matter.

The air tightened, and three creatures staggered as their limbs dragged inward, their paths bending toward the center of her field.

Their bodies resisted, claws scraping stone, until the pull deepened and snapped them closer together.

Bakugou saw the opening before the targeting ring finished breathing light into the stone. His wrist angled down, blade tipping toward the cluster instead of the closest target, and Uraraka understood the adjustment before it became a command.

His knees bent, weight dropping into the jump, and she inverted the field at the exact moment his boots left the ground.

The mana drain sharpened, a clean slice from her reserves as gravity turned wrong. The creatures tore upward, their bodies lifting off the ground in a sudden, helpless cluster. Bakugou was already airborne.

His weapon cleaved through the first two before they reached the ceiling. The dragon surged beside him, flame spilling in a controlled burst that caught the third and turned it into drifting cinders before the spell began to unravel.

The exchange was over in the space of a few hard breaths.

Uraraka lowered her staff gradually, easing the last of the field out so the corridor didn’t rebound under everyone’s feet.

Kaminari stared at the empty patch of corridor.

“What the hell was that?!”

Bakugou landed with a hard scrape of boots against stone.

The dragon dropped beside him, smoke curling from its mouth. Neither of them looked impressed by themselves, which somehow made it worse.

Uraraka took one slow breath and tried to arrange her expression into something mild.

“Gravity field,” she said, because that sounded safer than admitting how practiced it had felt.

Sero stared at the empty patch of corridor where the creatures had been, his grapple still hanging loose from one hand and whistled.

“That was several gravity fields.”

Midoriya stepped forward before anyone else could answer, his attention moving from the ceiling to the floor and then back to Uraraka’s staff with the kind of focus that made her want to hide it behind her back.

“That wasn’t beginner timing,” he said, voice already picking up speed.

“The field hadn’t fully resolved when Bakugou jumped. Either the visual cue appears earlier than I thought, or the opening was obvious to both of you.”

Uraraka’s grip tightened around the staff. Midoriya wasn’t replaying the move so much as naming the part of it she had hoped would stay unspoken: that Bakugou had trusted her spell before anyone else would have known what it was doing.

Bakugou rolled one shoulder, smoke curling from the dragon’s mouth beside him.

“Save the autopsy, nerd. They’re not done.”

The far end of the corridor began to glow orange, the light spreading through the cracks in the stone.

The dungeon had accepted their first fight, measured it, and decided the next one should hurt more.

A notification opened at the edge of her vision.

Dynamic Calibration Updated

Party Combat Efficiency: Elevated

Enemy Pattern Variation: Active

Kaminari pointed at the text, panic creeping into his voice before he could pretend it was strategy.

“What? No! Why does it say elevated? I don’t want the murder hallway to have expectations.”

“Because some of us are carrying,” Bakugou said.

Somewhere beyond the orange glow, stone scraped slowly across stone.

Uraraka breathed out through her nose and shifted her staff into both hands.

The first cast had barely dented her mana, but she could still feel the memory of the spell in her arms, a faint hum under the skin where the system translated magical strain into something the body understood.

That was what she liked most about the game, and what made it dangerous. It rewarded intention, turning every choice immediate and physical.

The next room waited past the orange glow, and Uraraka knew enough about Ashfall to distrust how familiar it looked.

The corridor would widen, the floor would break into uneven levels, and the ceiling sigils would punish anyone who launched too high.

She knew because she had made that mistake, and because Bakugou had cut off the ashbound knights that nearly forced her into the wall afterward.

The memory pulled her backward with the color of the light: rain on dark leaves, a quest board shining under a crooked lantern, Bakugou standing beneath a ruined arch like he could intimidate the system into giving him a better option.

The first night hadn’t felt like the beginning of anything. It had felt like getting caught with her hand halfway inside a secret she hadn’t known belonged to both of them.

Mushrooms, the prompt had said, and slimes, the warning had added, with nothing about Bakugou Katsuki standing under a ruin arch at the edge of the woods, pretending he hadn’t also snuck back into the server after hours.

She had logged in after curfew with the careful guilt of someone who had already talked herself out of doing it twice.

The Support Course demo had ended hours earlier, but the world had stayed in her head through dinner, through homework, through brushing her teeth while Mina talked about a third-year from Class B who had apparently gotten a centaur mount during calibration and refused to explain how.

Uraraka had nodded in all the right places and thought about the way the system’s gravity field had gathered around her staff, pink light threading across the training platform as if the world were waiting for her to tell it which direction to fall.

She only meant to check the skill tree for ten minutes, maybe fifteen if she was being honest.

The system had spawned her at the edge of Briarfall Outpost, a low-level hub tucked beneath an enormous tree whose roots had grown through old stone walls and market stalls. Lanterns hung from the branches in soft golden clusters.

NPC merchants called to each other in looping conversations, their voices blending with the sound of rain tapping against leaves overhead.

Players moved through the square in flashes of armor and cloak, some with names she recognized from class calibration logs, most strangers from other UA-approved test groups.

Her avatar had felt too new then. The pink cloak sat awkwardly over her shoulders, the hood half-slipping because she kept reaching back to check if it was really there.

Her staff looked cleaner, less worn, its carved lines only faintly lit because she hadn’t yet learned how to hold mana in the channel without overfocusing.

Every menu opened too eagerly. Every sound made her turn. A profile window hovered briefly at the edge of her vision.

ZeroGMochi

Level 1 — Magus Student

Gravitational Discipline: Unstable

She had taken three steps into the square before a system prompt appeared.

New Side Quest Available: Mushroom Mischief

Collect Mooncap Fungi: 0/6

Warning: Briar Slimes are attracted to harvest activity.

She stared at the prompt for a few seconds. A mushroom-gathering quest felt harmless enough, which was exactly what a person thought before being eaten by slime in every game ever made.

Still, it was better than opening her skill tree in the middle of the spawn point like Midoriya. She accepted.

The quest marker led her out of the lantern-lit square and into the forest beyond the outpost, where rain fell in silver lines through the canopy and pooled in the hollows between roots.

The world was quiet there, soft and green and damp, with moss glowing faintly along fallen branches.

Mooncap fungi grew in little clusters near the base of the trees, their pale blue tops pulsing whenever she got close.

She crouched to gather the first one.

The ground burbled, and a slime rose from the mud with a wet sound.

Uraraka made a noise she was grateful no one heard and stumbled back hard enough to bump into a root. The slime bounced once, gathered itself, and launched at her face.

“Ew, ew, ew!” she gripped the staff with both hands. “Nope.”

The first gravity spell she cast was terrible. The field opened too wide, caught half the surrounding leaves, and lifted the slime only three inches off the ground while also sending three mushrooms spinning into the air like tiny glowing umbrellas.

 The mana cost stung more than it should have.

The slime wobbled in place, confused but not defeated, and she had to smack it with the end of her staff to finish the job. It burst into blue jelly particles. A notification chimed.

Briar Slime defeated.

Obtained: Slime Gel ×1

Uraraka stood there in the rain, breathing too fast, and then started laughing. It escaped her before she could stop it, small at first and then warm enough to loosen the embarrassment from her shoulders.

She had fought villains. She had been thrown through concrete. She had trained until her muscles shook and her stomach turned sour.

And here she was, alone in a fantasy forest after bedtime, proud because she had survived an angry puddle.

She gathered three more Mooncaps before the quest marker pulled her toward a deeper part of the woods. That was where she saw him. At first, Bakugou looked like part of the environment.

A figure beneath the broken arch of an old ruin, black and red armor darkened by rain, arms folded as he glared at a quest board nailed crookedly into the stone.

The lantern beside it flickered orange across his face, catching the hard line of his mouth and the fur at his shoulders. Uraraka stopped so fast her boots skidded in mud. His nameplate hovered above him.

GroundZero

Level 2 — Vanguard Initiate

Dormant Draconic Bond

Rain whispered between them while neither of them moved. Then Bakugou’s eyes shifted toward her. The silence stretched. Uraraka felt her mouth open. Nothing helpful came out.

Bakugou’s scowl deepened. “No.”

She pressed her lips together. It didn’t help as much as she wanted. “Are you doing a mushroom quest?”

His jaw tightened. The quest board behind him glowed faintly.

Available Party Quest: Mooncap Burrow

Recommended Players: 2

Objective: Clear the Briar Slime Nest

Uraraka looked at the prompt. Then at him. Then back at the prompt.

The rain collected along the edge of his cape and dripped onto the stone. Somewhere near his boot, a tiny red-scaled creature sneezed sparks into a puddle and made itself yelp. Uraraka’s attention snapped downward.

The creature was no bigger than a fox then, all sharp angles and oversized wings, with small horns that looked too heavy for its head. It shook rain from its snout and glared at the puddle as if the water had committed treason.

“Oh,” she said before she could stop herself.

The little dragon sneezed again. One pathetic spark jumped from its nose and died in the rain.

When the dragon peeked around his boot, Uraraka crouched without thinking, balancing her staff against her shoulder as she extended one hand palm-up, not close enough to touch, just enough to offer. The dragon stared at her fingers with deep suspicion. Its golden eyes flicked toward Bakugou, then back to her.

Slowly, with the dramatic caution of a royal inspecting a peasant, it stretched its neck forward and sniffed. A soft system prompt appeared.

Companion Interaction Available

Offer item?

Uraraka hesitated. Her inventory was mostly empty, aside from three Mooncaps, one Slime Gel, and the starter rations the system had given her.

The dragon sniffed again, nose twitching. She selected a ration. A small piece of roasted meat appeared in her palm.

Bakugou made an outraged sound. “Don’t feed it.”

“Aww, are you hungry? Is your mean master not feeding you?”

The dragon delicately took the meat from her hand, swallowed, and immediately stepped around Bakugou’s boot to get closer.

“He’s the worst, huh?”

Bakugou looked down at his companion with naked betrayal.

“Traitor.”

The word came out too sharp for a creature that barely reached his knee, and that made it worse.

Uraraka’s smile slipped wider before she could stop it. The dragon licked a crumb from her palm.

Bakugou’s eyes dropped to her hand. For a strange little beat, his glare lost its direction.

He looked at her fingers curved carefully under the creature’s jaw, at the rain clinging to the edge of her sleeve, at the easy way she made room for something that had approached her with teeth. Then his scowl came back, sharp enough to make her bite down on another smile.

“Stop spoiling it.”

She laughed then, quiet but impossible to hide, and the sound warmed the damp space beneath the ruin arch. Bakugou looked away sharply, as if the trees had become fascinating.

“Oh, relax. Even if it isn’t real, it wouldn’t kill you to treat it nicely.”

Rain filled the silence between them until the quest board chimed.

Party Quest Available: Mooncap Burrow

Minimum Party Size: 2

Finally, Uraraka tucked her staff closer and tried for casual. “Well, I’m already here.”

Bakugou scoffed. “Congratulations.”

“I can leave if you want to wait for someone else.”

His eyes cut to her. The answer came too fast to be fully hidden, sharp and immediate beneath the scowl. He didn’t want to wait.

He had been standing there because he needed another person and hated that fact enough to make the quest board suffer for it. Uraraka should have been polite about noticing. She wasn’t. Her smile grew.

Bakugou’s expression darkened. “Wipe that look off your face.”

“What look?”

“This isn’t funny.”

“It’s a little funny.”

“It won’t be when the slimes eat you.”

“You’ll protect me, right?”

His face did something almost worth getting eaten by slimes to see.

The reaction barely touched his face, only a flicker near his eyes and a brief stutter in the line of his mouth before he buried it under a glare.

The system translated enough of it through his avatar that Uraraka felt a sudden, ridiculous burst of victory.

Bakugou turned toward the quest board. “I’m not carrying you.”

“I was about to accept the quest.”

“Then do it before the board times out.”

The party invite appeared in front of her.

GroundZero has invited you to party.

Uraraka stared at it. The rain kept falling and his dragon had taken shelter beneath the edge of her cloak. The invitation timer ticked down in the corner.

Party Formed

GroundZero

ZeroGMochi

The ruin gate beside the quest board rumbled open, revealing a passage down into soft blue dark. The smell of wet earth and moss rose from inside, and somewhere below, several slimes burbled in chorus, deeply unthreatening and somehow ominous at the same time. Bakugou drew his weapon from his back.

It was too big for a level-two avatar and looked like the kind of thing someone picked because subtlety had personally offended them.

He stepped toward the entrance, and Uraraka followed. The little dragon padded between them for three steps, then veered toward her ankle. Bakugou noticed.

“Oi.”

The dragon looked back at him.

“Wrong person.”

The dragon blinked. Then kept walking beside Uraraka.

Bakugou’s grip tightened on the weapon. Uraraka bit the inside of her cheek until it hurt.

The first dungeon they cleared together was damp, ridiculous, and full of slimes that kept dropping from the ceiling with wet plopping sounds that made Bakugou angrier every time.

Uraraka’s gravity fields were too wide, then too weak, then badly placed enough that she accidentally lifted Bakugou six inches off the ground in the middle of his attack. He hung there, weapon raised, boots hovering over the moss.

The silence that followed was immediate and terrible enough that Uraraka lowered the staff slowly.

“Oops.”

Bakugou turned his head toward her inch by inch.

“Drop me.”

“I’m trying.”

“Try faster.”

“You’re heavier than the slime!”

“Hurry up!”

The dragon, safely perched on a nearby rock, chirped.

Bakugou pointed the sword at it while still floating.

“You’re next.”

Uraraka lost the fight with her laughter so completely she nearly lost the spell too. Bakugou dropped the last few inches, landed hard, and stalked straight back into combat with murder in every step.

After that, he adjusted, waiting half a breath before committing to a strike, enough for her field to settle under the enemy instead of under him. She narrowed her range. He stopped standing directly inside the targeting ring.

She learned that if she pulled enemies into a tight cluster, he could break through them faster than chasing one at a time.

He learned that if he forced the slimes toward the walls, her gravity push could pin them long enough for his dragon to land a tiny burst of flame without getting swarmed.

By the time they reached the slime nest at the bottom of the burrow, they were still bickering, still messy, but the rhythm had changed.

The mini-boss rose from the mud in a wobbling mound of blue-green slime, three times Uraraka’s height and crowned with stolen Mooncaps that glowed like little lanterns. Bakugou stared at it. Uraraka stared at it. The dragon hid behind her boot.

Bakugou said, “That thing is disgusting.”

Uraraka lifted her staff, trying not to laugh at the Mooncaps glowing from the top of the slime’s head. “That thing is our quest objective.”

The fight went badly for the first minute because the slime split whenever Bakugou struck it too hard. Uraraka’s field slowed the smaller pieces, but they multiplied faster than she expected, bouncing around the chamber with horrible enthusiasm.

The dragon’s fire worked, but only when the slime held still long enough to burn, and it didn’t enjoy doing that. Then Bakugou drove his weapon into the ground and knocked three slime pieces toward her with the flat of the blade.

“Float ’em,” he snapped.

The instruction hit her at the same time as the opening. She planted her staff, pulled the field tight, and caught the slime pieces mid-bounce.

They hung in the air, trembling and furious, droplets quivering along their edges. Bakugou’s eyes moved once over the suspended cluster. His mouth curved, and his voice dropped into the private focus she was already learning to recognize.

“Higher.”

She pulled. The mana drain sharpened, but the field lifted cleanly, hauling the slime pieces toward the low ceiling where moss and roots tangled in a thick mat.

Bakugou lunged forward and struck the main body hard enough to split it again, sending more pieces flying upward into the field she was already holding. The dragon scrambled onto a rock, puffed itself up, and released its biggest flame yet.

The flame was still small, a stubborn little burst more spark than blaze, but it caught where it needed to. The fire caught the suspended slime pieces in a single burst. Blue-green bodies flashed orange, shriveled, and burst into steam.

The main body quivered, destabilized by the loss of its split forms, and Bakugou hit it straight through the center.

The mini-boss collapsed into a puddle of glowing particles. The chamber held them in the damp blue glow until the system chimed.

Quest Complete: Mooncap Burrow

Party Sync Bonus: +3% Experience

New Combo Registered: Gravity Snare + Vanguard Break

Companion Affinity Increased

Uraraka read the notification once. Then again.

“Party sync,” she said.

Bakugou rolled his shoulder, trying to look unimpressed while his avatar dripped slime particles from one bracer.

“System fluff.”

She turned toward him, smiling despite the mud, the rain, the ridiculous mushrooms, and the faint mana ache in her hands.

“You mean we fixed it.” Bakugou looked at her then, really looked. The blue glow from the Mooncaps softened the sharpness of his avatar’s face, catching in his eyes and along the damp edges of his hair.

The little dragon climbed onto the rock beside him and shook slime off its wings, but he didn’t glance down. His focus stayed on her, steady and unreadable in a way that made the damp chamber feel smaller than it had a second ago. Then he clicked his tongue and looked away.

Her smile widened. “We should be celebrating, that was a huge win!”

“Celebrate after loot.”

The loot chest appeared between them in a puff of blue light. Uraraka laughed again, and this time he didn’t tell her to stop.

A creature shrieked in the present corridor.

Uraraka’s eyes snapped open to orange light, black stone, and Bakugou already moving.

The memory vanished so fast it left her breath half-caught as the dungeon sent the next wave.

These enemies were taller than the first, thin armored figures with ember cracks running through their limbs and rusted blades dragging sparks across the floor.

They didn’t rush blindly. They spread as they advanced, two moving low along the walls while a third held the center and waited for someone to commit. The system had learned from the first fight, and so had the class.

“Iida, center!” Midoriya called, his voice sharper now, less amazed and more present.

“Kirishima, left flank!”

“On it!” Kirishima drove forward with his shield raised, intercepting the enemy angling toward Mina.

Iida met the central knight with a ringing clash, the impact throwing sparks across his armor.

Kaminari’s lightning cracked down the corridor a moment later, cleaner this time, striking the blade of the right-side enemy and making its arm jerk wide. Jirou’s instrument hummed. The note she released rolled low through the corridor, not loud but heavy, vibrating through the stone under the enemies’ feet.

Their movements stuttered, giving Sero’s grapple enough time to catch one around the torso and yank it off-balance.

“Ha!” Sero shouted. “That was on purpose.”

Shinsou stepped past him and drove a short blade into the enemy’s exposed side.

“Eventually.”

Mina laughed as she slipped around Kirishima’s shield and slashed at the nearest knight’s knee joint, acid-green light splashing across rusted armor.

“We’re getting better!”

Bakugou was already pressing the center line. The dragon surged beside him in a burst of heat, forcing the central knight to raise its blade defensively.

Bakugou used the opening to drive in close, weapon striking hard enough to crack the ember-lit plating across its chest. His bracer dipped toward the enemy’s rear foot as he reset his stance, the motion too quick to be a signal and too familiar for Uraraka to miss.

She felt the next spell before she shaped it, keeping it narrow, practical, and easy to hide in the chaos.

The corridor was too crowded, and the class had finally found the beginnings of a formation; a wide inversion would ruin more than it helped, so she opened a narrow field under the knight’s rear foot instead.

The targeting ring flashed faint pink beneath the ash and vanished. Mana pulled in a thin line from her reserves.

Gravity shifted. The knight’s back leg dragged suddenly heavy, pinning for less than a second.

Bakugou struck the opposite side of its body at the exact instant the weight caught. The enemy twisted wrong.

Its guard opened. The dragon’s flame hit the exposed seam. The knight shattered. Midoriya saw it, of course he did.

“That was targeted weight manipulation,” he said, sounding thrilled and personally betrayed at the same time. “You didn’t immobilize the whole enemy. You only anchored one limb.”

Uraraka lifted her staff again, cheeks warming. “It seemed useful.”

Bakugou cut through the next knight’s blade and kicked it back toward Kirishima’s shield.

“Talk less.”

“You talk less,” Mina shot back, breathless and grinning as she ducked beneath an enemy swing.

“I wasn’t talking to you.”

Kirishima laughed as he slammed the shield forward, staggering the knight into Jirou’s next resonance note.

The sound rippled through its armor, and Kaminari’s lightning found the weakened seam with a clean snap.

The knight burst apart. The last one tried to retreat, a new preservation instinct that made Uraraka’s attention sharpen.

It backed toward the orange-lit arch at the end of the corridor, blade raised, head turning slightly as if calculating escape routes.

The system had given it preservation behavior, maybe because the party had cleared the first two waves too quickly.

Uraraka moved without thinking. She stepped past Mina, her staff sweeping low, and cast a gravity well behind the enemy instead of beneath it.

The pull opened like a hook in the air. The knight’s retreat became a stumble, then a full backward drag as the field caught its center mass and hauled it away from the arch. Bakugou’s weapon came down before it could recover. The knight dissolved in a spray of ember fragments. The corridor emptied.

After the fight, the quiet felt different to Uraraka, less like shock and more like awareness settling over the corridor. Kaminari lowered his hand slowly, electricity still sparking between his fingers.

“Okay. That one felt a bit better.”

Jirou let the last note fade from her instrument.

“Don’t get used to it.”

Iida exhaled and lowered his shield, but his posture stayed alert.

“Improved coordination. We should maintain this formation.” Midoriya nodded, though his gaze kept sliding toward Uraraka’s staff.

“The system rewards combination patterns. If we identify repeatable openings, we can probably force bonus synchronization.”

“Don’t make it boring,” Bakugou said.

Midoriya’s hand hovered near another menu. “I’m trying to make it survivable.”

Uraraka lowered her staff and let the mana flow settle.

The spellwork still tingled through her hands, familiar now in a way it hadn’t been that first night in the slime burrow. She could feel the difference between then and now like the weight of the staff itself. Back then, every cast had been too much or too little.

Now she could place pressure exactly where she wanted it, thin as a wire or wide as a tide.

Bakugou had learned the shape of it, and worse, she had learned the shape of him learning it: the dip of his wrist when he wanted space low, the shift of his shoulder when he expected her to catch debris before it reached him, the way neither of them had to name the language for it to become real.

That was the part she couldn’t look at directly.

The corridor widened ahead into the next chamber, orange light spilling across broken pillars and a floor split by old fractures. The path descended in uneven tiers toward a sealed door marked with three circular sockets.

Side passages opened to the left and right, each lit by a different color of flame. A puzzle room.

Mina stepped up beside Uraraka, eyes bright again now that no monsters were actively trying to eat them.

“I love puzzle rooms.”

“Of course you do.”

Shinsou looked at the three sockets on the door. “Looks like we need keys.”

Midoriya had already opened a small system scan window.

“Three side objectives, probably. Flame colors may correspond to trial types. Red for combat, blue for logic or traversal, green for environmental interaction?”

Sero tilted his head toward the left passage. “So we split up?”

Iida immediately turned. “Absolutely not.”

The dungeon answered before anyone could argue, and Uraraka watched system text unfurl above the sealed door in glowing orange script.

Ashfall Gate Trial

The trial didn’t feel like a separate puzzle placed inside a dungeon. It felt like the citadel turning their own habits into architecture.

Bakugou’s impact, her correction fields, the dragon’s ability to ignore terrain if allowed to fly; all of it had been accounted for before the green flames finished brightening along the walls.

Recover the Three Cinders

Recommended: Split Party

Warning: Trial difficulty scales with group size

Iida stared at the text.

Kaminari patted his shoulder. “The haunted fortress disagrees with you.”

“It’s tactically unsound.”

“It has patch notes.”

Mina turned toward Uraraka, already smiling.

“So who’s going where?”

Uraraka’s attention moved over the three passages. Red flame burned bright and restless on the left, almost certainly combat.

Blue held steady in the center, cool enough to suggest a puzzle or timing trial. Green flickered low near the floor on the right, where broken stone floated slightly above the ground before settling again.

Environmental interaction, then.

Gravity.

She felt Bakugou look at it at the same time she did. Her chest warmed before she could stop it. Mina noticed that too.

Bakugou started toward the right passage.

Iida’s hand lifted. “Bakugou, we haven’t assigned teams.”

“Then assign faster.”

“You can’t simply walk into a trial alone.”

“He’s not,” Kaminari said.

Uraraka froze. So did Bakugou, though his version of freezing looked more like becoming violently still.

Kaminari blinked, then pointed at Uraraka with a grin.

“Gravity room, right? Makes sense.”

Uraraka’s mouth opened, but no sound came out right away.

The suggestion was practical enough to trap her. Refusing would look stranger than accepting, and accepting meant walking into a side trial with Bakugou while Mina stood there looking like the universe had handed her a gift basket.

Midoriya nodded, completely earnest. “That’s logical.

Uraraka’s field control would be useful if the mechanics involve unstable platforms.” Iida considered the passage, then gave a reluctant nod.

“Very well. Uraraka and Bakugou will take the green trial. Kirishima and Kaminari, with me for the red trial. Mina, Jirou, Sero, Shinsou, and Midoriya can handle blue if it requires both analysis and mobility.”

“Wow,” Sero said. “That almost sounded like confidence.”

“I’m confident in your ability to follow instructions when sufficiently motivated.”

“Almost.”

Mina stepped close enough to brush Uraraka’s shoulder. Her voice dropped lower, sweet and wicked.

“Have fun.”

Uraraka gave her a helpless look that only made Mina’s smile worse.

Bakugou clicked his tongue from the mouth of the green-lit passage.

“You coming or what, Round Face?”

The nickname landed differently in the dungeon, softened by the way his voice carried against the stone and by the brief pause before he said it, as if he knew she was trapped between Mina’s grin and everyone else’s practical assumptions.

His dragon, now small again, had already abandoned his side and trotted back to Uraraka’s boots like the choice had been made.

Uraraka tightened her grip on the staff.

“Coming,” she said.

She stepped into the green light with Bakugou beside her, the dragon slipping between them, and felt the gate seal behind them with a soft, final rush of stone.

The green trial closed around them with the slow grind of stone sealing stone.

The sound of the others disappeared behind the slow grind of stone.

Kaminari’s voice cut off mid-complaint, Mina’s laugh vanished with him, and the broader dungeon settled into a different kind of quiet, softer but tighter, as if the room had leaned in to listen.

Uraraka stood still until her eyes adjusted. The passage ahead stretched long and low beneath a ceiling threaded with roots.

Green fire burned in shallow bowls along the walls, but it gave off almost no heat.

Instead, the flames moved like liquid, their light spilling across the floor in slow ripples that revealed floating fragments of stone suspended over a dark drop.

The path had collapsed at some point, leaving only broken platforms drifting in uneven intervals across the gap.

Some hovered steady. Others tilted, sinking and rising in delayed rhythm, each one marked with faint circular runes that pulsed whenever ash passed over them.

Below, the darkness moved.

Uraraka took one careful step toward the ledge. A cold current rose from the pit and slipped beneath her cloak, carrying the mineral smell of old stone and something sharper beneath it, like metal after lightning.

The closest platform bobbed in response to her movement, lowering an inch before correcting itself with a soft scrape of magic.

A system prompt opened in the air.

Ashfall Gate Trial: Cinder of Balance

Objective: Cross the Rupture and retrieve the Verdant Cinder

Trial Modifier: Weight Sensitivity

Warning: Excess force may destabilize platforms

The dragon, barely larger than a cat again, trotted to the edge of the broken floor and peered down into the dark. Its wings lifted slightly, then tucked flat when a gust rose from below.

Bakugou pointed at it without looking away from the platforms.

“Don’t even think about it.”

The dragon sneezed a tiny spark into the pit. Something below answered with a low, distant rumble.

Uraraka’s hand tightened around her staff. “That didn’t sound decorative.”

“Nothing in here’s decorative.” Bakugou stepped closer to the edge, eyes tracking the platform pattern.

“There’s a timing cycle.”

She looked back across the gap.

He was right. The platforms weren’t drifting randomly. The closest three shifted in a slow sequence, one rising as the next lowered, the third tilting left before settling.

The runes along their surfaces brightened only at the top of the movement, then faded as the stone dipped again.

A traversal puzzle with weight sensitivity, paired with Bakugou, whose natural approach to obstacles was to detonate through them. Uraraka felt laughter threaten at the back of her throat.

She pressed it down.

“You know, this might actually require patience.”

His eyes cut sideways. “You saying I don’t have patience?”

The dragon looked up at him.

Uraraka did too, and the look must have given her away because Bakugou’s mouth tightened.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

She immediately hated that he could tell, and hated even more that her smile widened before she could stop it.

The green light softened the hard planes of his avatar’s armor, catching on the red edge of his cape and the fur at his shoulders.

In the common room, with everyone watching, he had looked loud in this form.

Here, with the sealed gate behind them and the trial breathing softly ahead, he looked familiar in the way the game had made him familiar: sharp, restless, impossible to ignore, already measuring the space between danger and victory. The dragon nudged her boot.

She looked down. “You too?”

It chirped.

Bakugou clicked his tongue. “Quit encouraging him.”

The dragon’s tail flicked around Uraraka’s ankle. She looked back at the platforms before her face could give her away any worse.

“Okay. We need the Cinder, probably at the end.”

A faint glow pulsed on the far side of the rupture, where an altar stood beneath a twisted root arch. Something green burned inside a glassy crystal suspended above it, bright enough to paint the walls behind it with trembling light.

Between here and there, the platforms drifted in layered paths, some large enough for both of them, some barely wide enough for one.

Thin lines of green fire connected them in brief flashes, appearing and disappearing with each cycle.

Uraraka opened her interface with a small movement of her fingers.

Mana: mostly recovered.

Cooldowns: ready.

Her gravity tether was available. So was short inversion. Full field compression would be risky. Too much force might destabilize the trial, and the prompt had been clear enough that she believed it. The system loved punishing dramatic solutions. Bakugou had learned that the hard way last week when he tried to brute force a puzzle door and got turned into a chicken for four minutes. She had laughed so hard she nearly disconnected. He had refused to speak about it afterward. Repeatedly.

Bakugou crouched near the edge and picked up a loose piece of rubble. “Testing.”

“Don’t throw it too hard.”

He gave her a look. She gave it back. His throw was, by Bakugou standards, gentle. The rubble landed on the nearest platform.

The rune flared. The platform dropped three feet so fast Uraraka’s stomach followed it, then snapped back up with a grinding shudder. Far below, something scraped against the darkness in response, long and slow.

Bakugou stood. “Impact triggers it.”

“And weight,” Uraraka said, watching the rune fade. “Maybe balance too. If we step wrong, it drops.”

“Then we don’t step wrong.”

“Great. Official strategy.”

His mouth pulled at one corner. “Better than standing here.”

She gave him a look, but the smile got through anyway. Then she lifted her staff and tapped the end lightly against the stone, letting the familiar focus settle through her hands.

A faint pink ring opened over the nearest platform, then narrowed until it circled only the center rune. She pulled lightly, just enough to test resistance.

The platform hummed beneath the field.

Responsive.

“It’s not fighting me,” she said slowly. “It’s waiting for correction.”

Bakugou’s gaze shifted to her staff. “You can hold it?”

“Maybe. If I don’t force it.” She extended the field, thinner this time, feeling the edges of the platform through the spell the way she might feel the weight of an object under her quirk before release.

“It wants balance. If we move with the cycle, I can keep it from dropping.”

“And if you’re wrong?”

The pit breathed cold air up at them.

Uraraka smiled, even though her pulse had started to climb.

“Then you can yell at me on the way down.”

His expression sharpened in a way that almost became a scowl and stopped just short.

“Don’t joke about falling.”

The words landed differently than she expected. Quick and hard, pulled from somewhere too immediate to be casual. Her grip softened around the staff.

They had fallen before in this game. Plenty of times. Off cliffs, through false floors, into water, into lava once because Kaminari had joined their party for exactly one field event and somehow activated the wrong bridge.

The system caught, corrected, reset.

Falling here didn’t mean the same thing it meant outside.

Except Bakugou never treated it like nothing when it was her.

She let her gaze move back to the platform, giving both of them somewhere else to look.

“I’ll be careful.”

He didn’t answer right away.

Then his boots shifted against the stone. “Good.”

The dragon made a quiet sound and pushed its head beneath Uraraka’s hand.

She stroked one finger over the ridge between its horns, a quick touch, grounding herself as much as calming it. The scales held their usual warmth despite the cold air rising from the rupture.

The dragon leaned in, shamelessly pleased.

Bakugou muttered, “Spoiled brat.”

Uraraka’s smile slipped out before she could stop it.

“It knows who appreciates it.”

“Don’t encourage it.”

The dragon made a pleased little sound under her hand, which did nothing to help his case.

Uraraka stroked once over the ridge between its horns, then let her hand fall back to the staff.

The next platform rose through the dark ahead of them, green rune brightening as it reached the top of its cycle.

Her smile faded into focus.

“I’ll go first.”

“No, I’ll go.” Bakugou jerked his chin toward the platform. “I’m heavier.”

“That’s exactly why I should test the correction field first.”

His jaw flexed once. He looked from the platform to her staff, then down into the dark where something moved beneath the stone.

“If that thing drops, I can get back faster.”

“If it drops with you on it first, I’ll be correcting your weight after the impact instead of before it.”

She adjusted her grip on the staff and held his stare.

“Let me do the thing I’m here to do.”

The dragon glanced between them as if it had found a better show than the trial.

Bakugou exhaled hard through his nose. “One platform.”

The green fire shifted across his face, catching in the sharp line of his eyes before he turned his attention back to the platform.

“Move before I change my mind.”

She turned toward the rupture and let the last of her smile settle into concentration.

The platform nearest them rose again, rune brightening as it reached the top. Uraraka placed the end of her staff against the ledge and opened the correction field, feather-light.

Pink light spread beneath the platform’s green rune, thin and steady.

She stepped out.

The platform tried to drop beneath her full weight, and she widened the pull, spreading the pressure across the rune until the stone steadied beneath her.

The correction held, trembling around her like a held breath.

She brought her other foot onto the platform and lifted her head. Bakugou stood at the edge with his weapon angled behind him, every line of him wound tight.

The green light caught in his eyes, turning the red of his irises brighter as his gaze moved over her stance, the platform, the space beyond her, then returned to her face.

“You good?”

The words came out rough and simple, and her chest warmed anyway.

“Yeah, I think you’re good to start walking out now,” she said.

He stepped onto the platform, and the stone dropped.

Uraraka’s mana dipped as the correction field took his weight, a sharper pull dragging through her shoulders.

The platform tilted beneath them, and she shifted instinctively, adjusting the field before the rune could flare out of control.

Bakugou moved at the same time.

He grounded his weight through the opposite side, knees bending slightly, stance settling exactly where the spell needed help.

The platform steadied between them, still trembling, but no longer falling.

They stood close enough that his cape brushed her cloak, the silence between them taut as something massive passed beneath the stone through the dark.

The movement rolled under Uraraka’s boots.

His hand snapped out before the next lurch could take her balance, catching her forearm just above the wrist. His fingers closed firm through the glove, thumb pressing against the inside of her arm where her pulse jumped beneath the fabric.

He only held, steady and absolute, while the platform shuddered beneath them and her spell tightened around the rune.

The dragon chirped from the starting ledge.

Bakugou’s head snapped toward it. “Oi. You stay there.”

The command came so sharply that Uraraka turned before she thought better of it. Her foot shifted wrong on the platform’s edge, and the stone dipped under her weight. The correction field buckled for one ugly breath.

Bakugou caught her before the tilt could become a fall, one hand firm at her side, the other braced near her elbow as her shoulder bumped back against his chest. Heat rushed up her neck so quickly the cold air from the rupture barely touched it.

“And you,” he said near her ear, voice low and rough with irritation that sounded far too much like worry, “pay attention.”

Uraraka looked where he was glaring and found the tiny dragon crouched on the ledge, wings half-spread, tail lashing with all the offended dignity of a creature preparing to pounce onto a platform that could barely tolerate two people.

The dragon sneezed smoke at his boot.

Bakugou’s mouth flattened as he looked between them.

“Both of you are impossible.”

Uraraka’s face warmed before she could stop it, but the next platform saved her by tilting sideways as it rose.

It was narrower than the first, less forgiving, with a set of floating stones drifting beyond it in a staggered line toward a larger slab beneath a curtain of hanging roots.

The roots swayed though there was no wind, their tips glowing faintly with green fire.

A second system note opened.

Platform Chain: Active

Correction Window: 4 seconds

Failure Penalty: Trial Reset

Uraraka read it and grimaced.

“Four seconds.”

The bridge flickered in and out of existence ahead of them, green fire snapping into place for a breath before vanishing again. Uraraka watched the rhythm once, twice, then opened her next correction field before the platform finished rising.

Bakugou moved the instant the bridge appeared.

Uraraka cursed under her breath and followed, the spell stretching thin between platforms as they crossed.

Mana pulled in quick, tight increments, each step asking for more control than the last. Her boots hit the second stone at the edge of its tilt, and her balance slid sideways.

The world slipped green and black beneath her.

Bakugou’s hand caught her waist. His grip closed at her side with enough force to stop the slip and enough care not to pull her off balance.

Uraraka felt the pressure through her cloak, his palm broad and hot against the curve of her ribs, and the platform groaned beneath them because her focus scattered hard enough to make the spell wobble.

The contact vanished almost as soon as she found her footing, but the warmth of it stayed exactly where his hand had been. The platform gave an ugly groan.

Bakugou’s eyes snapped to the rune.

“Focus.”

The absurdity of it hit her in the middle of the trial: the dark below, the shifting platforms, the mana drain humming through her arms, Bakugou scowling at her like she had personally inconvenienced gravity.

A laugh escaped before she could stop it, breathless and quick.

His gaze flicked to her mouth. The next green bridge lit.

He looked away first. “Move.”

They moved.

This time, the rhythm came cleaner. Uraraka cast ahead, placing each correction field a half breath before their boots landed.

Bakugou adjusted his weight instinctively, never stepping where her spell was weakest, never forcing the platform to take more impact than it could handle.

When the stones narrowed, he went first and turned just enough to brace her landing without making a production of it.

When the roots swept low from the ceiling, she tugged their weight upward with a quick pulse, clearing the path before they could wrap around his weapon.

Their movements stopped feeling like argument and became something older than words, each step folding into the next: her correction field catching the platform, his weight shifting to meet it, the spell loosening as their balance carried them forward.

The platform chain curved in a wide arc over the rupture. Below, the darkness churned harder, irritated by their progress.

Twice, long shapes rose close enough for Uraraka to glimpse pale edges moving beneath the surface, but they sank again when the platforms stabilized above them.

On the fifth jump, a root snapped down from the ceiling.

Bakugou cut through it before it reached her, the blade flashing past her shoulder with a rush of heated air.

On the sixth platform, the stone dropped too quickly beneath his weight.

Uraraka planted her staff against the rune and pulled hard enough to feel the mana cost bite. The platform caught, jolted, and rose, throwing Bakugou’s shoulder into hers as he regained balance.

He stayed there for half a breath longer than he needed to.

“Too much?” he asked, low enough that the trial nearly swallowed it.

Uraraka checked her mana bar, but his attention was already on her face, not the interface. The question sat between them differently than the others had.

Less like strategy. More like he had felt the strain go through her and hated the thought of her pretending otherwise.

She swallowed. “I can keep going.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Her fingers tightened around the staff. The green light moved over his face, catching the edge of his scowl and the worry hidden beneath it.

It would have been easier if he had snapped at her. Easier if he had barked another order and gave her something to push back against.

Instead, his shoulder was still warm against hers, and his eyes didn’t leave her.

“I’m okay,” she said, softer this time.

His gaze searched hers for another beat before he looked back toward the final platform. “Then don’t spend everything before the end.”

The words sounded like an order. They landed like care.

Warmth moved through her that had nothing to do with the dragon waiting behind them.

The final platform waited beneath the root arch, larger than the others but marked with three runes instead of one.

It floated directly before the altar where the Verdant Cinder burned inside suspended crystal, green fire twisting slowly at its heart and throwing flecks of light over the wet stone.

Uraraka stepped onto the final platform first.

The three runes flared. Her interface flashed red.

Weight Imbalance Detected

Stabilize: 00:04

The platform dropped.

“Bakugou!”

He jumped before she finished saying his name. His boots hit the opposite rune hard enough to make the whole platform shudder, but the weight corrected instead of collapsing. Uraraka threw her field across the third rune, pulling down where the platform tried to rise, lifting where it tried to sink.

Mana drained fast, a clean line vanishing from her reserves as the system fought for balance.

The timer ticked.

Three.

Bakugou shifted his stance.

Two.

The platform leveled.

One.

The runes locked.

The drop stopped so suddenly Uraraka’s knees bent with the force of it. Bakugou caught her elbow before she could stagger, fingers closing around her arm as green fire surged bright across the platform.

Stabilized

Verdant Cinder Accessible

The altar opened with a low stone sigh.

Uraraka exhaled, breath shaking as the mana pressure loosened around her hands. Bakugou was still holding her.

She became aware of it slowly, the firm heat of his glove around her elbow, the slight pull of his fingers where he had caught her, the way he hadn’t let go even after the platform stopped moving.

Her gaze dropped.

His followed and immediately released her with a controlled reluctance that made her pulse trip harder than the catch itself had.

His fingers slipped from her sleeve one at a time before he turned toward the altar, jaw tight.

“Get the thing already.”

Uraraka smiled at his back, small and private, and stepped forward.

The Verdant Cinder hovered inside the crystal, its light pulsing in time with the runes beneath their feet.

When she lifted her hand, the crystal unfolded into pieces of green glass that hung briefly in the air before dissolving.

The flame curled toward her palm, weightless and cool, then sank into a small ember-shaped stone that settled above her inventory window.

Obtained: Verdant Cinder

Trial Complete

Party Sync Bonus: +5% Experience

New Cooperative Pattern Registered: Gravitational Correction + Dragon-King Counterbalance

Uraraka read the last line, pressing her lips tightly together. Bakugou leaned close enough to read over her shoulder, and the warmth of him reached her before his voice did. His cape brushed the back of her cloak. One of his bracers hovered near her elbow, close enough that if she shifted, her arm would touch his.

“System fluff.”

She turned her head without thinking. He was right there. The green light caught along his cheeks and softened nothing about his expression except the part he forgot to guard. His eyes dropped to hers, then lower for the briefest dangerous instant before returning to her face.

“You always say that when it’s right,” she said.

His mouth tightened, but he didn’t look away. The dragon’s chirp echoed faintly from the far ledge.

Bakugou stepped back first. “Come on.”

The return path unfolded beneath their feet, every platform locking into a steady bridge now that the trial had been cleared. The pit below settled with a resentful groan, and the green flames along the walls brightened toward the sealed gate.

Uraraka followed him across the now-stable stones, staff resting against her shoulder, cinder glowing in her inventory.