The day of the Forest Training Camp arrived before anyone knew it, like a season that suddenly crept up while you were only looking away for a moment.
After everyone finished getting ready, the students gathered in front of the school.
Aizawa gave everyone a long speech.
"U.A. High has finished its first semester and is now in summer vacation. But! For all of you who aim to become Heroes, there will be no days spent basking in rest. This Forest Training Camp will push you toward an even higher level: PLUS ULTRA!"
"Yes!"
After the others answered in unison, Uraraka hurried over to Midoriya as the students split into their usual groups.
She thrust her face close to his and said with a bright smile, "Deku-kun! The training camp is finally starting!"
"Y-Yeah! Uraraka!"
Too close!
Midoriya was still hopeless around girls, so his face turned bright red and he stammered while making awkward gestures.
Uraraka, who was surprisingly dense in her own way, leaned in even closer and asked, "What is it?"
"N-No, it’s nothing!"
Tilting her head, she stared at Midoriya’s face, and then suddenly remembered what Aoyama had said during the final exam.
You like him, don’t you?
"Kya-hah! T-Training camp, right! Camp! Camp! Camp, camp~"
She reflexively jumped back and started shouting whatever came to mind.
Since she had happened to blurt out the word camp, Ashido and Kaminari, who were already excited beyond reason, joined in while clapping along.
Watching them, Kirishima clicked his tongue.
"Tch. The first-timers always get all hyped up like that."
From his past life, he had gone on far too many distant training trips to mistake travel for training.
No matter how nice the place was, there was no time to enjoy it.
Instead, all that waited was hellish training, followed by even more hellish training.
Judging by Aizawa’s personality, this camp didn’t seem like it would be easy at all.
As Kirishima looked at the overexcited students who had no idea their expectations were about to be shattered, a familiar, irritating voice came from the side.
"What’s this, what’s this? Class A has extra members too? So that means someone failed the final exam, right? Huh? Isn’t that weird? Isn’t that weird? Class A was supposed to be way better than Class B, wasn’t it? Hmhmhm?"
To be fair, the voice itself wasn’t irritating so much as the way he spoke.
Objectively, he was a good-looking guy with a nice build and a voice that wasn’t bad at all.
But watching him twist his body into a bizarre pose while taunting everyone with that smug expression made even Kirishima, who rarely got rattled, wonder what the hell this guy was supposed to be.
Then Kendo appeared beside him and chopped Monoma on the back of the neck.
Watching Monoma collapse in a heap, Kirishima felt a fresh wave of admiration.
Striking someone in the neck hard enough to knock them out was a very dangerous, delicate thing.
To do it so naturally... he had seen it once before, but she was an interesting girl.
Kendo, who had caught Kirishima’s attention, apologized and calmly grabbed Monoma by the back of the neck before dragging him away to put him aside.
"Sorry!"
"Ah, Class B!"
Midoriya, who looked less angry than simply bewildered, finally came to his senses and spoke up.
Among the girls from Class B who had gathered nearby, the one with dark green hair grinned and answered him.
"We fought a bit at the sports festival and all that, but anyway! Nice to meet you! Class A!"
"Let’s get on the bus!"
As the students nodded and were about to say something in response, Kendo boarded the bus and called out, "Let’s get on the bus!"
"Okay~"
The girls answered playfully and climbed onto the bus for Class B, and Kaminari watched their backs with a moved expression.
Kirishima thought he was the kind of guy who was somehow perverted, yet not quite perverted, and still somehow perverted.
"This way is Class A’s bus! Line up by seat order!"
Just then, Iida guided everyone with his usual rigid gestures.
Now that they were used to that side of him, the students naturally boarded the bus.
At last, the bus departed, and the Forest Training Camp began.
Aizawa started explaining the schedule to the students.
"You lot! In one hour, the bus will stop once! After that, for a while..."
"Let’s play music!"
"The first letter in shiritori!"
"No standing up from your seats!"
Looking at the students, who were already so excited that nothing was getting through to them, Aizawa sighed.
He turned his head and muttered, "Well, whatever. This may be the only time you can make this much noise."
Kirishima, who somehow caught that line in the middle of all the noise, let his eyes sharpen but said nothing.
Training was training, so it was only natural. Besides, whatever they had prepared probably wouldn’t apply to him anyway.
Whatever the test was, if it was set for students, Kirishima would breeze through it like breathing.
On the other hand, if it was set with Kirishima in mind, the others would never be able to handle it.
As far as he was concerned, if there was some new kind of training that would actually challenge him too, he’d welcome it. But that probably wasn’t the case.
It would be nonsense to throw away the other nineteen students for the sake of one person.
And so the bus, carrying one silent passenger and nineteen who knew nothing, sped onward without slowing.
After an hour had passed, Midoriya got off the bus and stretched.
"Finally, a rest stop?"
"Bathroom! Bathroom!"
"What is this place? It’s not a parking lot."
Kaminari, who had been chugging drinks in high spirits and then started fidgeting in panic, tilted his head in confusion.
The bus had stopped in a place surrounded on all sides by mountains, with no buildings in sight.
Hearing Kaminari, Jiro also voiced her confusion.
"Huh? What about Class B?"
"If there’s no purpose to it, the meaning becomes thin."
"W-What about the restrooms...? What are we supposed to do?"
Shou, sensing something ominous in Aizawa’s cold, grim-reaper-like voice, cautiously asked the question, but unfortunately he was cut off.
Someone had gotten out of a car.
"Hey, Eraser!"
"It has been some time."
The person who greeted Aizawa was a woman with a bob cut.
She climbed out of the car with the others and struck a pose, shouting, "Lock on with sparkling eyes!"
"Cute and catty, Stinger!"
"Wild Wild! Pussycats!"
Kirishima blinked and silently stared at them.
They were clearly adults, but the sight of people in cat-tail skirts, cat paw gloves, and mechanical headbands that resembled cat ears striking poses like a sentai team left him more than a little stunned.
"Uh..."
He started to say something, then decided silence was the wiser choice.
He was only in his forties, but at least he had enough life experience to know that saying what he was thinking right now would be a bad idea.
The long-haired blonde woman and the bob-cut woman were definitely beautiful, but no matter how he looked at it, what he had just seen did not seem suited to adult women.
Fortunately, Aizawa introduced them to the students, who were already half out of their minds.
"These are the Pro Heroes we’ll be relying on this time, the Pussycats."
"A four-person Hero team that runs a rescue office! They’re veterans who specialize in mountain rescue and the like! Their career spans twelve years as of this year..."
Midoriya, excitedly rambling about the Pussycats, accidentally said something he absolutely should not have.
The blonde woman immediately grabbed his head with her huge cat paw.
"My heart is eighteen!"
"Y-Your heart is...?"
"Eighteen!"
Watching that, Kirishima thought, once again, that it had been smart not to say anything.
Sometimes, women became scarier than tigers when certain topics came up.
If you weren’t confident you could praise them carefully and skillfully, it was more sensible not to say anything at all.
When he looked away from the two women and glanced at the little kid in the horned hat, who was wearing a thoroughly grumpy expression, Aizawa said, "You lot, greet them."
"We’re in your care!"
After the students finished their chorus of greetings, the woman who introduced herself as Mandalay explained the situation.
"This entire area is our private property, but your lodging is at the foot of that mountain."
The students were startled when they looked in the direction her finger pointed.
There wasn’t even a smaller mountain in front of them, so she must have meant a mountain far, far away.
Uraraka muttered in confusion, "Then why are we stopping in such a random place?"
"Could this be...?"
"No, no..."
"Should we just get back on the bus?"
As the students slowly began trying to deny reality, Kirishima started shifting into [Demon Form].
When the situation looked bad, the first thing to do was prepare to go all out. As expected, they were still kids.
They really seemed to lack experience from actual combat.
Just as Kirishima was thinking that maybe he should take this chance to launch the indiscriminate ambush he had been considering earlier, since this was a training camp and all, Mandalay swayed her tail and said in a cat-like voice that sounded as if she were facing a mouse, "It’s 9:30 right now. At this rate, you might arrive around noon, maybe?"
"We’re screwed."
"Ah, screw this, let’s get back on the bus!"
"Run!"
"Any kitty who arrives after 12:30 won’t get lunch~"
As the students hurried back toward the bus, Aizawa added one merciless line.
"Sorry, but this camp has already begun."
Before anyone knew it, the blonde woman had placed her palm on the ground in front of the students.
Then a massive amount of dirt surged up like a landslide and swept everyone away, sending them tumbling down below.
Mandalay leaned over the railing and shouted down at them, "Hey! Quirk use is allowed on private property! From now on, you have three hours! Reach the facility with your own two legs! Break through this beast forest!"
At her words, the students who had been swept down by the dirt turned their gaze toward the forest behind them.
As forests thick with trees often do, it had a gloomy, damp atmosphere.
Midoriya muttered blankly, "Beast forest?"
"What kind of name is that? It sounds like something out of Dragon Quest!"
"U.A. has way too many events like this!"
"What good does complaining do? We’ve got no choice but to go."
"Aah! I can’t take this anymore!"
As the students tried to steel themselves in their own ways, Shou threw away his usual polite manner and ran into the forest.
He had intended to take care of his bladder somewhere out of sight of the others, but a bizarre beast appeared in front of him.
"A monster!"
As it raised its grotesque hand to strike Shou down, Koda ran forward and shouted, "Calm down! Beast! Please stand down!"
The thing ignored him completely and swung its arm.
Midoriya instantly activated [Full Cowl] and carried Shou out of the way.
It doesn’t work on Koda-kun’s Quirk, which makes animals obey him? Ah, the dirt. I see.
When he realized the connection between the dirt that had swept the students away and the monster in front of him, the quick-reacting Class A students charged at the beast.
The grueling march to the lodging had begun.
Meanwhile, Kirishima stood lightly bouncing in the air, using the wind pressure from his legs.
He looked down at the blonde woman swishing her tail and asked, "May I come down now? Or should I just run to the foot of the mountain like this?"
She smiled and answered, "My name is Pixie-Bob. And yes, you can come down. Testing how you handle a surprise attack was part of the exam, after all. Besides, sending you down there probably wouldn’t mean much anyway."
At her words, Kirishima dropped down and released [Demon Form].
Pixie-Bob came right up to him, leaned in close, and asked, "You’re really strong! Are you sure you’re only a first-year?"
"Yes. I’m fifteen."
"My goodness! Then there’s a sixteen-year age gap between us? Hmm... is that too much? No! Celebrities overcome that kind of thing all the time!"
Kirishima stayed quiet as she circled around him with the look of someone eyeing prey, licking her lips and letting her tongue run across them.
He had lived among Japanese people who were usually sensitive to manners and rather shy, so this was a first for him.
Of course, not every Japanese person would behave politely at first meeting, but because of Kirishima’s height and build, everyone usually became cautious around him. So this really was the first time.
She was careless in a different sense, though.
"What are you doing to a kid?"
"Hey! Ah, that hurts! Don’t do that! Damn it!"
The slightly strange, slightly awkward situation ended when Mandalay walked over and tugged on Pixie-Bob’s ear.
Mandalay gave Kirishima an apologetic smile and said, "Sorry. She’s at that borderline age where people start thinking about marriage, so she’s been a little unable to judge her limits lately. Please forgive her."
"Ah, yes. It’s fine. Besides, you both may not be young anymore, but you look like you’re only in your early twenties. You’re beautiful."
Watching Kirishima smoothly score points, she smiled despite knowing it was just lip service.
Pixie-Bob, on the other hand, looked ready to cause a scene.
"Hey! You heard that, right? He said we only look like we’re in our early twenties! He’s got sense!"
"Even if we looked early twenties, that would still be at least a five-year gap, you fool. Have some shame! What are you doing in front of a student?"
Mandalay firmly put Pixie-Bob in her place, then left Kirishima alone and asked Aizawa, "That schedule of yours is outrageous, Eraser."
"Well, we came here to have them learn something they’d normally only be expected to pick up in the first half of their second year. No matter how you slice it, they’ll have to push themselves. They need a limited license for emergency Quirk use, an interim license for Hero activity. With Villains becoming more active, they need a means of self-defense."
"I like that."
By then, Kirishima had moved beside Mandalay and was listening in.
Aizawa looked at his red eyes and thought, This kid might suit a proper license more than an interim one... but that’s not my problem. The Public Safety Commission can handle it.
"That’s how it is. You’re stronger than the others, so I’m sure you get frustrated sometimes. Still, until you get your interim license, follow the proper procedures if at all possible."
"Yes. I have no intention of running wild without authorization."
After finishing his short conversation with Aizawa, Kirishima wondered what he was supposed to do next when Mandalay called over the grumpy little kid.
"Kota, let’s go!"
The little boy, who had been muttering under his breath, climbed into the car at her words.
Kirishima blinked at the sight of Aizawa, Mandalay, Pixie-Bob, and Kota all getting into the car.
A sedan was originally a four-seater, but in truth, five people could squeeze in.
The problem was that Kirishima’s build was about the same as two normal people.
Feeling the four pairs of eyes on him, he sighed and said, "Please go ahead. I’ll just run after you."
"Hm? Is that all right?"
"Teacher. If you’re going to ask, at least make a pitying face. Don’t look so matter-of-fact about it."
"Well, this is the more reasonable option."
"Ah, yes."
In the end, he used [Demon Form] again and ran alongside the car to the lodging.
It was the first step of the Forest Training Camp, and it held no joy, no dreams, and no expectations.
Comments (0)
Please log in to leave a comment. Login or Register