Chapter Text
Smoothing down the fabric of her skirt one last time, she meets her reflection's eyes. It's disconcerting to see dark indigo looking back at her, but Kisara figures it best to get used to it as soon as possible. Combing a hand through her darkened hair, she sighs and turns away.
No way to go but forward, now.
She's not even one step out of the apartment door when kindly Umeki-obaa throws open her own door, cheeks flushed a rosy red. Her verdant eyes glitter in thinly concealed excitement as she holds out a neatly wrapped bento for her to take. Quickly locking the door behind her, Kisara steps forward and takes the bento with a demure smile.
"You didn't have to, Umeki-obaa, really...", she trails off, feeling her own cheeks heat up.
Umeki-oba has been nothing but hospitable and kind to her ever since she moved in a few months ago, even going so far as to bake her treats every now and then. It feels wrong to accept when she can't reciprocate these gestures in any way.
"Nonsense, child," the old woman chides, warm and worn hands grasping one of her own. "I did it because I wanted to and nothing you say will make me regret it. Now, best get going or you'll miss your train, young lady."
They share a laugh and then she's out the door, hurrying to catch the train.
.
The constant press of people's bodies against her own proves to be as horrid as ever; the morning commute is always filled with chattering teens, wailing children and annoyed businessmen and -women alike. Kisara sighs tiredly and resolves to take an earlier train starting the day after. Maybe that way she can avoid the masses...
She tries to busy herself with her phone, but her nerves win out and she is left with her spiralling thoughts, blankly staring ahead. Countless scenarios float through her mind, each worse than the last. While she knows very well that her mind can be both her greatest asset and her worst enemy, that awareness does little to steady her trembling fingers.
"Hey, you!", a little boy tears himself from his mother's hand, shoving through the people to reach her. Taken aback she catches him when he threatens to run straight into her legs.
"You shouldn't run off like that, your mother looks worried already," she says. Glad to be wearing tights, she doesn't hesitate to bend down and balances the boy on her hip, then pressing through the throng of tired people to reach the mother looking more panicked by the second.
"I saw your uniform," the boy lisps, grinning up at her. "My big sister says that means you go to the best Hero School!"
"I don't know if Yuuei is the best there is, but it's certainly among them," she replies, to his obvious delight. The boy's mother then catches sight of them, looking close to tears already. With a girl about nine or ten at her side, the young mother moves to meet them halfway. She immediately takes her son from Kisara's arms, hugging him fiercely.
Then the panic and shock seem to wear off and she starts chastising him: "Hayashi Yaso, what were you thinking? If the nice girl hadn't brought you back to us, do you know what could have happened to you? What if you hurt yourself or-"
The little boy, Hayashi Yaso, interrupts her with a frantic shake of the head. "Nee-chan is way nice! She would never! And I just wanted to ask if she's going to the cool Hero School!" Here, he starts pouting and his mother sends her daughter a frustrated look.
"It was of no issue, Hayashi-san. Yaso-kun was lucky it was me, yes, but now that his question has been answered, I'm sure he won't be so quick to run off again." The frazzled mother only then seems to remember her continued presence and hastily bows in gratitude.
"Really, thank you so much for your patience with him! He usually never runs off... but ever since Shiho set that thought in his head, he's been so unruly whenever he spots a Yuuei uniform." The daughter, Shiho, doesn't appear very interested in the happenings around her, instead fiddling with a Rubik's cube.
"It's alright, Hayashi-san, I have an older sibling as well; I understand completely. I hope you have a good day now, Yaso-kun, Shiho-chan and Hayashi-san, but I'm afraid this is my stop."
All hail the train conductor!
.
After little Yaso-kun's curiosity and Hayashi-san's insistent thankfulness, Kisara feels very drained. Not even one step into the school building and her social battery is all but dead!
Pursing her lips in displeasure, she tries to navigate the purposely confusing layout of the school. Every little thing grates her strained nerves.
After another three hallways that all look exactly the same, she decides to suck it up and starts scanning the students milling around the halls for someone that doesn't have the first-year confusion written all over their face. And, score-
"Hey, sorry to interrupt, but do you know where-"
"The classrooms for the first year Hero course are?", the boy she's asked finishes dryly, rubbing the bridge of his nose with a deep and tired sigh. His companion, a girl about Kisara's age, punches him lightly in the shoulder.
"Don't be so rude, Nao-kun," the blonde exclaims. Then she turns towards Kisara, leaning forwards conspiratorially, "Sorry about him, he's a real grump before he's had his first coffee." She pauses. "I'm Seo Imari, by the way. This grump goes by Miya Naohiro. We're in 3-B, so we know our way around and can totally show you to your room!"
"Suzuki Mei, pleased to make your acquaintance." Kisara bows and tries to ignore the familiar taste of ash and copper in the back of her throat.
"Great! Come along, Suzuki-chan! We're gonna have to make a pit stop at a vending machine if we don't want Nao-kun scaring the next hapless first year." Seo-senpai giggles and sidesteps Miya-senpai's half-hearted kick easily.
"That's fine, Seo-senpai, thank you so much," Kisara says, feeling both saddened and happier at this casual dynamic. They seem close. Familiar with each other. At ease, too. Maybe that's what it would have been like if- anyway.
"So, you're obviously Hero course, but what class?", Seo-senpai asks as she leads the way, flanked by herself and Miya-senpai.
"1-A," she says, trying to memorize the way they're going. "How did you know I'm in the Hero course, though?"
"Your uniform," Miya-senpai murmurs, tapping on the golden buttons on his shoulder. There's one on each side.
Trying to see what he means, Kisara turns her head this way and that way, trying to catch sight of someone with more or fewer buttons on their shoulders. Four corridors along, she sees a tall girl with fascinating eyelashes and pink hair, shoulders adorned with two golden buttons per side.
"So, two on each shoulder is another department?", she tries to clarify, frowning.
"Yeah, got it in one," Seo-senpai enthuses, stopping in a hallway like any other, except there's a vending machine nestled into a niche.
Frustrated, Kisara puts her face in her hands, sighing long and deeply.
"I will never stop getting lost in this stupid school," she whines. Miya-senpai laughs lowly and claps her on the shoulder, moving past and throwing some coins into the machine.
"You'll get the hang of it soon," he assures. "D'you want anything?", he asks, gesturing towards the different options. Drawing closer, she starts rummaging through her bag, trying to locate her wallet, only for it to suddenly fly out of her hands towards Seo-senpai, winking at her as she catches it out of thin air.
Telekinesis, Kisara thinks.
"This one's on us. Think of it as a... welcoming gift!" The blonde teen grins, looking quite like the cat that caught the canary.
"Thank you very much, senpai." Kisara bows once more and gets pulled straight by Seo-senpai in almost the same breath.
"Nonsense, you'll need your drink of choice sooner rather than later." And with that ominous statement, Miya-senpai shoves a carton of, eerily, her favourite strawberry milk drink into her hands, holding three cans of coffee himself. He cracks one open and nods solemnly at his friend's words.
"Why?", she dares ask, poking the plastic straw into the perforation. Seo-senpai pops up again behind her classmate, having acquired a green tea herself. With all transactions finished, Seo-senpai deigns to return her wallet.
"You're in 1-A," Miya-senpai simply shrugs and starts leading the way again.
"What's that got to do with anything?" She's not sure she actually wants to hear the answer.
"Your homeroom teacher is great," Seo-senpai says, turning around and walking backwards, seemingly not even sparing a glance at her surroundings and avoiding obstacles anyway. "He's just very unique."
.
Turns out, her homeroom teacher is quite unique in terms of teaching methods. No school assembly for Class 1-A, no tour of the building, no icebreakers to further interpersonal relationships, no nothing.
Kisara's thoughts are one endless repetition of What the fuck? as they're led to the locker rooms, heading towards a stretch of land behind the school building where they're to take an assessment test. Of their quirks, probably, but, still, she's very baffled and feels like Seo-senpai and Miya-senpai could have given her more of a warning.
"Man, what kind of sociopath had this idea?", a pink-skinned girl whines, equally pink curls bouncing with every movement.
"Wouldn't put it past the principal," Kisara comments quietly, sweeping her hair into a simple braid and securing the typical flyaways with bobby pins. Pink girl snorts in humour, sending her a thumbs-up, mouth otherwise occupied with taking a swig from her water bottle.
"Does someone have a spare hair tie?", a brown-haired girl with a cute bob cut grimaces. The girl with the earlobe mutation hands her one with a cute little charm attached to it, smiling in solidarity. Seems as if no one quite expected this turn of events on their first day.
Once everyone is finished, the girls of Class 1-A file out as one, beating about half of the boys to the field where their teacher is waiting for them.
A few minutes after that and, finally, everyone has changed and is ready as they can be.
They're to complete a quirk assessment, combined with the typical physical fitness tests everyone and their mother always does in middle school. To demonstrate what results can be achieved with a quirk in the mix, he calls up a blond boy with ruby eyes. His result is a bit loud on her ears but very impressive nonetheless: he throws the ball a bit further than seven-hundred metres, aided by his explosion-related quirk.
Sighing internally when her classmates comment on how fun this exercise is going to be, she can't even find it within herself to be surprised when their teacher announces that the student that's ranked last will be expelled from the school, effective immediately. It's, truthfully, a scary prospect and she can already see despair settling into the bones of some of her classmates, whereas the others just seem to grow more determined by this announcement.
Curiously, she sees their teacher carefully observing their individual reactions. It gets her thinking...
He leads them to the fifty-metre dash first, calling up one Aoyama Yuuga and Ashido Mina as the first pair to go at it. Ashido, as it turns out, is the pink-skinned girl that complained about the existence of physical exercise on their first school day. Aoyama is a boy with carefully styled blond hair and eyes that seem to sparkle even at a distance. - Between the two of them, Ashido is slightly faster.
She takes care to observe the names and faces that go along with them, doing her best to memorize who's who. After a while, Todoroki Shouto, a boy with split hair and eye colours, and then herself get called to the start.
She crouches low to the ground, fingertips mere inches from the white line. From the corner of her eyes, she can see Todoroki's breath start to fog; an elemental quirk or simply something related to heat distribution, molecules or atoms.
At the signal, she pushes herself from the ground, gaining momentum and gliding to the end of the track easily and swiftly. The robot on her side calls out her result with a staticky voice, then about one or two seconds later that of Todoroki. The glare sent in her direction is one of icy fury. Kisara shrugs in answer; she doesn't really care at all.
They clear the field for the last few groups, then they're marched to a table with twenty machines lying in wait that are supposed to measure their grip strength. Kisara takes one of them for herself, observing as her classmates gingerly grip the handle, results starting to be called out left and right.
Thinking it over carefully, she lightly takes it into hand and- well. Avian strength, right? Equals an even ninety-two kilograms.
A few of her classmates squint at her petite and wiry build when her results get called out, unsure how her so far not-apparent quirk factors into this result and how much of that grip strength is truly her own, quirks aside. A nervous boy with green hair and freckles like grains of sand at the beach, Midoriya she thinks, is looking between her and his certainly more toned arms with a despairing expression.
After that it's the standing long jump and that's just very effortless and very boring, but it does bear a certain comedic effect when her classmates try to figure out her apparently mercurial quirk. She clears the sandbox easily and gets squinted at by at least six different people. On any other day this scrutiny might have caused her to snap or withdraw into herself completely, but she's so far past done she doesn't even care anymore.
The repeated side steps go by smoothly enough, no one really being able to benefit from their quirks bar maybe the ponytail girl, Yao-something, or the smarmy purple boy she doesn't even care to learn the name of.
Seated toe-touch and then the sit-ups are easy enough, considering how she trained herself on the basis of being quick, agile, flexible and hard to pin. That training comes in handy enough when her flexibility is now off the charts, worth every curse and all the sweat she shed.
The distance run passes quickly, endurance and stamina not being something she lacks in particular. Granted, her feet do feel a bit sore after, and she sighs as she moves to the side, rubbing her faintly throbbing ankle, dust around her rising as she ruffles her feathers in exasperation at Yaoyo-girl's utterly ridiculous quirk that's seemingly able to create anything and everything she sets her mind to.
Predictably, lastly, they get to participate in the ball throw that the ruby-eyed boy, Bakugou, already demonstrated at the start.
When she gets called up, it’s a matter of seconds for her to attach a feather and throw it, the feather carrying it as far as her range allows, which turns out to be–
”893 metres.”
It’s easily the highest score so far, bar infinity. (Which, what the fuck, by the way.)
After her, it's technically Bakugou's turn but since he already went, it's Midoriya that gets to have a go at it. He has been another student that's visibly not been using a quirk and she can't help but give both her classmates and her teacher the side-eye when the students start clamouring about him never even using his quirk. How would they know? If it were a mental quirk, how would anyone ever know?
His first attempt gets thwarted by their own fucking teacher, who tells him to stop breaking his bones while utilizing his quirk, which, harsh. Maybe he came to Yuuei because he thought they could help him control his quirk and turn its destructiveness firmly to the outside and away from his own fucking body. So in conclusion, teacher-man has a point, but she doesn't think he has all the facts.
Midoriya still breaks his fucking finger on his second attempt and looks very proud of it. Kisara just kind of stares at him for a moment and then gives up.
It's been a long day, is all she can say.
Despite breaking his bones, (or maybe because of it?) Midoriya still comes in last, followed by smarmy purple and the kind hair tie-giving girl, Jirou.
She’s ranked 7th herself, beating out a boy with a tail mutation, Ojirou, by a small margin of points.
Despite teacher-man's earlier threats, Midoriya does not end up expelled, but smarmy purple does; for attaching himself to poor ponytail during the long-distance run and groping her when he thought the teacher wouldn’t see. Teacher-man is very unapologetic and unforgiving even in the face of smarmy purple's wailing.
"Yuuei takes harassment of any kind very seriously," he says sternly, sending a red-tinged glare over the lot of them. Kisara sees quite a few people flinch back from it, but she's more fascinated by the wonderfully idiotic idea of leaving one's hair open and grab-ready when a side-effect of the quirk is making said hair float.
Bemused, she watches as he’s frog-marched by their teacher to the principal’s office. Pausing mid-step as if remembering something, he calls over his shoulder that they can expect a physical examination the next day, then rounds the corner and all they can hear is smarmy purple's faint cries.