Kirishima paused for a moment.
After quickly turning over a few thoughts, he decided that just explaining it with words would mean nothing.
"I’ll just show you first. I figured hearing about it wouldn’t really make the scale of it sink in."
"Fair enough. Since the Quirk assessment test, this is the first time I’ve seen you do anything directly. It probably would’ve been more rational to watch you move first and talk after."
"Yeah. Probably."
Kirishima took Aizawa’s permission and warmed up a short distance away.
He bounced in place, loosening his wrists and ankles, rolled his neck a few times, and then settled into his stance.
From the classic posture of a boxer, everything he had built over decades and everything he had gained in this life burst out at once.
His straight punches tore through the air, and the arcs of his kicks cleanly split the space around him.
At the absurd speed, his movements looked chopped up, as if someone were watching a low-frame-rate film.
The repeated bursts of air drew the attention of the students who had been training nearby.
After shadowboxing for about three minutes, he stopped, released [Demon Form], and turned to Aizawa.
His expression barely changed, but his eyes had widened slightly in surprise. Seeing that, Kirishima said flatly, "That’s about it. I didn’t put much power into it, but the speed is almost the same as when I’m going all out."
The reactions varied.
The Class A students and Aizawa, who had some idea of Kirishima’s strength, only looked mildly reassured, as if confirming something they already knew.
Class B and Blood King, who hadn’t had much contact with Kirishima, seemed far more shocked.
Still, they had at least seen him go wild during the sports festival, so their reactions were relatively restrained.
The Pussycats, on the other hand, were stunned.
What he had just shown already looked like top-rank territory.
And that was him holding back. It went beyond common sense.
Of course, as veterans, they didn’t stay rattled for long.
"Wow! You’re one strong kitty! Or maybe that’s not the right way to say it?"
"Uh, thanks. But I still have more to show you."
Kirishima calmed the overexcited Pixie-Bob, then called out to Tiger, who was watching him with a meaningful look.
"Tiger! Can I borrow Midoriya for a minute?"
Originally, he had planned to spar lightly against Tiger or Aizawa.
But after thinking it through, there was nothing to gain from beating a teacher in front of the students.
He also didn’t want to just throw out words about being the strongest and act like a braggart.
So he settled on the easier target: Midoriya.
They hurried over to him.
Midoriya tilted his head and asked, "Why me all of a sudden?"
"If I only show you my specs, I can’t show what I’d look like in an actual fight. It’d also be hard to prove my technical level."
"Eh? So I’m the sacrifice?"
"Haha. A sacrifice? You’re lacking the mindset of a warrior, Midoriya. Let’s call it an opportunity for growth."
"That’s just a sacrifice..."
Even while grumbling, Midoriya asked Tiger for permission and immediately took his stance.
His left hand guarded the front while his right hand was poised to strike.
Looking at that, Kirishima said, "No [Dambe]. Just use your Quirk and come at me. I’m not using mine."
"I really don’t think that’s a good idea. Even for Kirishima-chan, that’d be hard."
"Didn’t I keep saying something to you?"
"Win first, then talk? Fine. Bring it on!"
With a real chance now in front of him, Midoriya bared his teeth.
Seeing the lightning crackling over Midoriya’s body, Kirishima grinned.
He lowered his guard more than usual, leaving his field of vision open, and then kicked off the ground.
He was still fast even without using his Quirk, but it was within the range of something humanly possible.
Midoriya had been caught countless times before, yet he still threw a punch at Kirishima’s baiting footwork, half on instinct and half on purpose.
But his fist never touched Kirishima’s body.
As if he had predicted it, Kirishima had already slipped to the side and casually extended his left hand.
The attack, with almost no power behind it, tapped Midoriya’s forehead and pulled back.
"Do it properly!"
"We don’t have Recovery Girl here, so I can’t do it properly."
Teasing him, Kirishima continued to evade and deflect Midoriya’s attacks with ease.
He wasn’t blocking them head-on, probably because he wasn’t using his Quirk.
What he showed was like peering into the future, and in some ways it was even more shocking than the performance he had just put on.
Even though Midoriya’s face was twisted with frustration and his attack speed was clearly serious, Kirishima didn’t allow a single blow through.
Instead, he toyed with Midoriya, lightly tapping his head or kicking away his weighted foot to break his balance.
When Midoriya came in grinding his teeth, Kirishima planted a front kick to stop his thigh, then slipped back as Midoriya’s lower and upper body fell out of sync and he staggered.
"All right, that’s enough. You should get back to your own training."
"Hah. You really are..."
Midoriya was left speechless by how irritatingly Kirishima had simply done what he came to do and then backed off.
Ignoring him, Kirishima looked at Aizawa and said, "Well, that’s about it. I hit a little, I dodge a little."
Aizawa and Blood King both relied mainly on close combat.
Aizawa could cover mid-range with his capture weapon, but his combat skill was still the core of his offense.
Blood King’s fighting style, enhanced by his Quirk, was harder to call pure hand-to-hand, but in the end it still came down to trading blows.
Neither of them had a ranking name, but anyone good enough to become a U.A. teacher wasn’t someone who could be pushed around easily.
To the two of them, Kirishima looked like the finished form of an enhancement-type fighter.
Sharp vision and insight that let him avoid attacks completely, terrifyingly polished technique, and a body that was stronger than it had any right to be.
As the two of them wondered what exactly there was left to train in someone who seemed to lack nothing, Tiger patted Midoriya on the shoulder and said, "Still, that’s impressively orthodox. Ah, not that I mean that in a bad way. From what I saw, your technique was flawless. If anything, it felt like the extreme end of simple, concise power. Have you never thought about learning something more irregular?"
Kirishima shrugged and answered, "Not for now. I’ve learned a few things as needed, but I think my Quirk is strongest when I stick to orthodox martial arts. If I do learn anything else, it’ll probably be grappling arts like wrestling or jujutsu."
"Hmm. I see. A pity. You might have been strong even if you learned cat combat."
"Haha. Unfortunately, I started with boxing."
Kirishima smiled softly and declined.
Tiger had no intention of forcing his own path onto someone who had already found his own and reached a high level.
Giving Midoriya’s shoulder one more encouraging pat, he turned and shouted at the students looking this way.
"What are you all standing around for? You look awfully relaxed. Move! You training rookies!"
"Eek!"
"W-we’re not rookies..."
The students were so startled by the thunderous scolding that they rushed back to training.
As the intense training continued, Kirishima and the teachers, after a discussion with the Pussycats, settled on the curriculum.
First, at Kirishima’s request, they would train to improve his aerial mobility. Second, they would work on reducing the time it took him to transform into [Demon Form].
At present, Kirishima’s aerial mobility only allowed him to move in a set direction.
If he tried to fight while making sharp directional changes, he immediately lost his balance, so there was clearly room for improvement.
The same went for his transformation time.
Compared to the Quirk assessment test, it had improved a lot, and he could now fully transform in about seven seconds, but that still felt far too slow.
At the very least, he needed to be able to transform within one second.
In the morning, he spent his time in [Demon Form], leaping through the air and making abrupt changes in direction. In the afternoon, he repeated the process of transforming and reverting over and over.
He was used to moving in a 2.5-dimensional space at best, with front, back, left, right, and maybe up. Trying to move while also accounting for down was not easy.
But Kirishima knew better than to expect to be fully satisfied on the first try, so he didn’t get discouraged and trained hard.
Before long, the sun was starting to set.
When Kirishima returned to the lodging with the exhausted students, he found a mountain of ingredients piled up in front of him, along with Pixie-Bob and Ragdoll.
Pixie-Bob repeatedly opened and closed her cat paws as she shouted, "All right, I told you yesterday, didn’t I? Make your own dinner! Curry!"
"Y-yes..."
"I ate food I made myself yesterday too, I guess..."
After the students’ weak, lifeless replies, Kirishima spoke up as well.
He was pretty worn out from the new training too.
"Ahaha. You’re all completely ragged! But that doesn’t mean you can make some sloppy cat food, got it?"
"Aha! Exactly. In a disaster, helping people by filling the stomachs and hearts of those worn down in shelters is part of rescue work! That’s U.A. for you! No waste at all! Let’s make the most delicious curry in the world!"
"That’s probably impossible, but we still can’t skip dinner."
As Aizawa watched Iida energetically urging the students on and Kirishima moving first, he thought, ‘Iida, Kirishima. Convenient, aren’t they?’
While he was lost in that strange thought, the students assigned themselves roles and got to work.
As Todoroki lit the stove, Kirishima tied on an apron and picked up a kitchen knife with practiced ease.
Even a fairly large knife looked like a little paring knife once it was in his hand.
Shou, who didn’t know how well he could cook, asked nervously, "Kirishima, you really can cook, right? If not, maybe we should leave it to the girls now. Ashido, or Yaoyorozu."
"I’m not sure about Yaoyorozu, but if you don’t want to eat dog food for dinner, forget about leaving it to Ashido."
Kirishima tossed that warning at Shou and started preparing the ingredients.
The razor-sharp blade peeled and sliced through the carrots and potatoes at incredible speed.
Fortunately, the vegetables had already been washed and prepared, so he could cut them right away.
After quickly handling the onions too, he brought all the meat over to a large pot and started stir-frying it.
As he mixed the meat with a spatula almost the size of a field shovel and then added the vegetables, a delicious smell began to spread.
Once he thought the ingredients had cooked enough, he added water.
"This is seven liters, right?"
"Of course! I know how important measurements are!"
"Good. I trust you, Sato."
He poured in the water Sato had brought over, one of the few students in Class A who could actually cook, stirred it, and then added the curry roux.
After that, he kept stirring so the curry wouldn’t burn to the bottom.
"All done. Everyone can bring their bowls and eat."
"Whoa! I guess we’ll know for sure once we taste it, but it smells like real curry!"
"Of course it smells like curry if you put curry in and boil it..."
Since they had gathered all the ingredients from both Class A and Class B and cooked everything at once, the line of students stretched long.
Kirishima had somehow ended up serving the food too, and as he ladled curry onto the students’ plates, he thought, ‘Why am I the one feeding everyone even here?’
"Because Eijiro is kind!"
Smiling brightly as she held out her plate, Ashido shouted when she saw his face.
She had seen through his thoughts, but he didn’t panic.
They had grown up together for so long that she often read his expression like that.
"Is that so? If you’ve got your food, move along. The people behind you are waiting."
"Hehe. You’re embarrassed!"
After she happily took her curry and moved on, Kirishima served a few more people, then got his own bowl and filled it.
As he sat down, the students showered him with praise and thanks.
"Whoa!! What is this? It’s insanely good! Maybe the setting helps, but this could totally be sold in a restaurant!"
"Why are you saying something so half-hearted when you clearly mean it! You idiot! Kirishima, this is delicious!"
"I’ll eat well! Or should I say I’m already eating well?"
In the middle of it all, Yaoyorozu was eating calmly and politely, but at a frightening speed. Ashido looked at her and exclaimed, "Yao-momo, you eat like a tank~"
"Yes. My Quirk converts stored lipids into all kinds of matter for creation, so the more I stock up, the more I can make."
"That sounds like crap."
At Sero’s careless remark, while he was shoveling rice into his mouth, Yaoyorozu looked deeply wounded and slumped down.
Jiro, furious, slapped Sero and shouted, "Can’t you apologize?"
"S-sorry!"
Kirishima sighed at the scene, but soon let a faint smile appear.
It wasn’t bad, this stupid, age-appropriate nonsense, the way they got hurt by it, and then apologized right away.
He lifted his head and looked up at the sky, glittering with stars as if they might pour down at any moment.
Unlike the city, the stars seen from the mountains seemed full of life.
Lowering his gaze again, he looked at the students, and his eyes curved warmly.
He hoped the future of these children would shine like those stars.
He hoped that even if hardship and pain came down like a torrential rain, they would never kneel, and would go on to live as heroes just as they wished.
Maybe he had grown more sentimental with age, or maybe he had simply grown attached to the kids.
Either way, he truly wanted these children to grow up without any of them being badly hurt or dying.
At the very least, while they were within his sight, he would protect them from anything the world threw at them.
With that quiet resolve, he put curry into his mouth.
The curry they had made together was delicious.
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