It was easy to think of a full week of training as being tiring, or slow, or painfully dragged out. There were only so many times that one could punch a wall, or kick some dirt, or destroy something with a Quirk until the users started to question if they were actually gaining anything from the affair.
Mina found herself enjoying the work though. She was physically exhausted beyond all belief, and almost always, without exception, collapsed into her bed once the day was over, and found herself covered in muck and sweat, skin sore with how much she'd had to push her Quirk, over and over again, experimenting with how far she could push her range without the need of additional apparatus, and pushing herself to experiment with the new special moves she was working on. Some days felt like she was just bashing her head against a wall, while others were a bit better.
Her Acid Veil technique was coming in leaps and bounds, and she couldn't be happier with how it had come out. Altering the viscosity of her Acid had given her an entirely new method of attack and defence, and one she was certain she would be able to make the most out of in the coming trials.
Exhausting, but enjoyable. Maybe because anything was enjoyable after what they'd just gone through. Like some kind of shift in reality, she just somehow felt better about pretty much everything that she was doing over the last few days. Like she was improving, and doing something that was honestly worthwhile. Like with each time she fired off her Quirk, she was getting better and better as a Hero, and could do more and more if she needed to defend herself again.
The ache felt good, in a weird sort of way. It was like a confirmation that she really was pushing herself, and that her body was going to feel the benefits of the hard work.
To use an analogy that she knew her brother would like if he were here, she felt like she was levelling up a character before taking on a boss in a video game. Only in this case, the character was her.
Of course, in video games, it wasn't only the levelling up that would help the player against bosses. There was also the constant search for new and better equipment that would help the player utilize all of their newfound skills against greater challenges.
And that was something that Mina had found in her latest addition to her Hero Costume.
"So, what d'ya think?! They're cute, aren't they?!"
The devices were fairly large for what they were – Taking up most of the space on her forearms, and were more akin to a cross between doctors' gloves and gauntlets than anything else. The actual contraption of the devices was about an inch or two of some kind of black-coloured acid-resistant metal, which ended up resting on the top of her forearm. It was attached to a piece of durable fabric, which sported the same blue and purple camouflage that her leotard was made from, equally resistant to her Quirk.
At the end of the fairly streamlined material, there was a nozzle, designed to increase the range of her Acid, and give it direction.
She'd already decided on the name for them – Her Acid Rangers.
A smile made its way onto the pink girls face as she looked towards Hatsume. "You are an amazing mad genius, Hatsume. These look incredible!"
Lowering her head to her shoulder, Mina did the closest thing that she could do to looking down the sights of her Acid Rangers. The nozzle, and the rest of the device, was scaled back so that no matter how much she bent her fist back, she wouldn't have to worry about jabbing it against the metal. It was also designed so that when she wanted to fire, she just had to lower her lower her fist, and tuck it downwards, which would give her nozzle a perfectly clear line of sight against whatever she wanted to shoot at.
They were, frankly, perfect, design wise at least. Exactly what she had been hoping for. A way to increase the range of her Acid, without sacrificing her hands-free style of fighting that she had gotten used to. She could still throw glomps of Acid with the best of them, and now she could shoot concentrated shots…
…As far as she could push the maximum range on these things.
Pride was etched onto every single inch on Hatsume's face. She held a spanner above her heart like it was some kind of salute. "These babies should give you an extra few meters of range! Though I'm not sure exactly how far it'll let you push it."
"I should be able to figure it out from here – As long as they get me more than five meters, they'll be just fine." Mina grinned, examining the devices once more. She found herself excited, and eager to try them out at the first chance she got.
Hatsume insisted on going over just about every detail to make sure that her customer understood everything about the equipment that there was to understand. Going over safety settings, active and standby modes, which let her retract the nozzle and fold up the metal for when she wasn't using them, and going over how she needed to funnel her Acid into two separate points to properly utilize the device – All things Mina had been kept informed of throughout it's development. This was more for Hatsume's sake than it was for Mina's, the horned girl felt.
It was probably a good sign that a designer cared so much about her creations being utilized to the absolute maximum, but all Mina could think about right now was getting the opportunity to try out these bad-boys.
She had to get through about ten minutes of meticulous explanation, but when she was finally finished, she could have sworn that just about every single intricacy about them was now burned into her brain for the rest of her days. She thanked the eccentric support engineer, and darted her way out of the studio before anything else happened that would prevent her getting back to Quirk training.
There were only a couple of days left before they would be taken to for the Provisional Licence Exam, and just about everyone was putting their absolute all into it. What had happened had motivated them all to truly go beyond, and live up to their school's famous motto. Countless encounters with Villains had pushed them well beyond the easily mistakable concept of time. Before the year had started, they had a whole three years to learn to train, to evolve their powers, and become the best Heroes that they could be.
Now, they only had three years.
A small, but crucial difference.
Mina wasn't the only one who had taken to upgrading her costume either. Kaminari and Kirishima had also seen Hatsume with ideas for their own Hero costumes. Though from what Mina could tell, Kirishima's seemed to be more aesthetically driven, while Kaminari's was more like her own – An enhancement of range via equipment. He had gotten hold of a launcher device that let him extend his range via some kind of eletro-magnetic round that conducted his Electricity along a direct path between him and where it landed. Since both he and Mina were Emitter types, it made sense that their first thought was to train their range.
A Transformation type like Kirishima wasn't really able to focus on range.
Though that still didn't mean Mina had any clue what his upgrade was aimed at. It was just sleeves. Was there an actual beneficial reason for them, or were they just aesthetic updates? She made a mental note to ask him if she got the chance.
Jirou and Koda also had advanced their costumes. Koda's was an obvious megaphone to increase the range of his voice so he could attract more animals to his cause, and Jirou's was based around amplifying her Quirks vibrations in much more devastating ways, adding speakers to her wrists in a similar way to the ones her boots had.
Others had been to see the eccentric pink-haired support student, to see if there was anything that they could do to improve their costumes. Iida and Uraraka had visited her, though it wasn't clear if they had gotten much out of the visit.
And of course, there was Izuku.
Now that just about everyone knew the truth about One For All, Mina could help but notice Izuku seemed to be putting in a lot more effort without even trying to, if that made even the slightest bit of sense. He seemed liberated, and less stressed over making up excuses and hiding behind the development of his power. He was putting more effort in, but it didn't look like he was trying to. It was hard to explain.
Anyone who saw him understood – He was a totally different person than he was back at the start of the year, crippled with confidence issues and anxiety. He still suffered those, but he had learned extensively to push himself beyond them. Of course, the entire year had been him slowly working towards doing that, but the benefits of which were just now starting to be seen. Now that he didn't have to lie about his Quirk, he could put that energy back into training, and the results were certainly becoming more and more positive for it.
When Mina re-entered the gym-slash-training room, she could already see him in the corner, practicing his Shoot-Style, with his new, bulkier support braces for his legs. He was leaping from point to point, and striking at the new cement targets wherever Cementoss created them. He was almost like a rabbit. Kind of like how The Rabbit Hero fought when Mina saw her on TV, only with the trademark 'Deku' spin on it. It was pretty spectacular to see.
He was storming ahead. Mina smirked. She didn't intend to let herself get left behind by the other half of Team Awkward Energy.
"Hey, Cementoss!" She called out and waved, trying to get the Cube-like Hero's attention. "I need something to practice with, please!"
Adept with his Quirk befitting a Pro Hero, the Cement Quirk user complied without having to even look at Mina, or slowing down any of his contributions to the other students' training. Within just a few moments, cement made its way over towards Mina's area, and formed itself in the shape of an archery target, complete with rings, and a bullseye, in the form of slight indents in the material.
Mina looked at her equipment, and grinned as her hand balled up into a fist, and she turned the device into active mode. She lowered her arm, aimed, and fired.
Unsurprisingly, she missed the first shot. She barely hit the target, most of her acid skimming over the top of it. She was firing from a point about two or three inches higher than she normally would be, and she was aiming for a precise target, which was unlike her normal 'carpet bombing' style of Quirk usage. This required strict finesse.
And she had put far too much power into the strike – When she shot acid from the nozzle, it entered a kind of barrel from her forearm, and shot out of the nozzle, like a firing mechanism. How fast and how far the acid would go depended on how ferociously she forced Acid through that mechanism. At closer ranges, she could afford to be a bit more lax with the sheer amount of power she put into her attacks.
At range, she needed to channel a lot power into her shots. And she'd vastly overestimated how much she needed to put in.
On top of that, she was generating Acid on specific points on her forearms – Which wasn't something she especially did, naturally. She'd gotten used to how much her hands and feet needed over the years, her forearms weren't exactly a limb she considered when she was training her Quirk. It was kind of like if a weight-lifter had spent years working on their biceps, and then suddenly had to change up their entire work-out regimen to focus on their abdomen. It would take a bit of time to adjust.
She blinked, and then tried again.
Shot after shot of her Acid was launched, with varying success. She experimented with different types of acid, and different power outputs, trying to figure out which one was best. The less viscous was quite quickly established as being the vastly superior one in terms of range, and while it took longer, a rough estimation of how much power she needed to put into her shots was also discovered. That was the easy part.
Getting used to aiming slightly lower than she thought she needed to was the trickiest part of this, especially when she tried to fire without aiming – In most cases, it didn't seem likely that she was going to have the time to aim at a select target, so she practiced without the accuracy a bit, a bit like she saw happen in old, western films. It would take up most of her time for the next few days, but she figured that she could come up with something to compensate before the Provisional Licence Exam.
It didn't take her long to get ideas for that kind of technique either.
Small shots worked well, but she was also able to generate acid and fire it out of her nozzle for longer, creating a kind of hose-stream like effect with her Acid. With this, se was able to compensate for a lack of accuracy, and could cover a wider area without letting anything get close to her.
And that was all in roughly the space of half an hour. She was figuring out her new devices in a rush for the upcoming exams. It made her wonder what other uses these things would be once she actually had some proper training to go with them.
"Hey, Mina!"
The young girl looked up from her training to see her boyfriend approaching her and giving her a small wave, a big smile covering his face. He looked like he had a couple of bruises, and his costume was dusty from all the cement he'd been destroying. He must have kicked through enough to destroy a building by this point.
"Hey, Izu. You finished for the day?" Mina asked, switching her Acid Rangers into safety mode - Just to be on the safe side. These things would need to be washed for any residual Acid after being used. She didn't want to risk him accidentally burning himself on her Quirk.
He had enough injuries as it was.
"Just a short break." Izuku answered, before taking a proper look at Mina's new support item. A smile that carried both feelings of pride and wonderment appeared on his lips."I saw you working with them a bit."
"What'd'ya think?" Smirked the Acid Quirk user, holding out the device on her left arm for Izuku to get a closer look at. "Looks cool, doesn't it?"
"They seem to be really helping you out with your range issues." He noted, running his hand over the metal of the device.
"Well, they will when I need 'em. Like you said, I don't wanna end up relying on them too much." She couldn't hide how pleased she was with the end result though. "These things're gonna make dealing with a lot of enemies a lot easier though." She looked up at him, and then gently tapped his chest with her reached out fist. "How 'bout you? How's your new kicking style working out for you?"
"He's got a hell of a tough kick!"
Both of the curly-haired teens looked towards an approaching Kirishima, showing off his teeth as he grinned at them.
"Ah, Kirishima." Izuku greeted the red-haired Hardening Quirk User. He received a firm hand on the shoulder as a response to that. He explained, "Kirishima and I did some one-on-ones."
Mina blinked, and then looked between Kirishima and Izuku. "I must've missed that."
"It was only for a few minutes. And you were pretty focused on your training."
"More focused than I've ever seen you on anything."
"Watch it, Kirishima." Mina warned, with a playful, lightly amused smile. She glanced between her boyfriend and the Hardening Quirk user, and wondered why the pair of them hadn't paired up for exercises before. "Makes sense you two'd pair up, now that I think about it. You've got pretty good Quirks for training with each other."
Kirishima's Quirk focused primarily on defence, but he had a limit as to how much he was able to take before he would lose the shielding that his Quirk gave him. And going against rocks wasn't going to help him in that regard.
At the same time, Izuku was getting used to a new style of fighting, focusing on his legs. It was an untested combat style when it came to fighting against other people, and it was certain to have many exposed flaws once he went up against people.
Training together, the pair of them would be able to home in on their strengths, and figure out their weaknesses much faster, as their Quirks and fighting styles essentially forced them to hunt for their opponents' weaknesses in order to stand a chance.
"Until my Hardening can't keep up. Then I end up with bruises." Kirishima rubbed his right cheek once he finished, Mina only now noticing that he had a fairly large bruise there.
"Y-You sure you're alright, Kirishima?" Izuku asked, sounding worried.
"Yeah. I'm good. I mean, I literally asked for it, so I can't really complain."
"What happened?" Mina asked.
Izuku bashfully rubbed the back of his head, and his expression ranged between guilt and embarrassment. "I uh… W-When we were doing some one on ones, I was jumping from the cliff-sides, and accidentally put a bit too much power into one of my kicks, and… Kind of hit Kirishima in the face."
"And sent me flying into the nearest wall." Kirishima added.
Mina couldn't stop herself from smiling in amusement. "Ouch." She chuckled. It wasn't so much what happened that made her laugh, but rather the blunt, straightforward manner Kirishima had presented it, and awkwardness Izuku was showing over it.
It was the same logic that made someone laugh when their friend tripped up. It really shouldn't be funny, but it was all the same. Mina almost felt bad for chuckling, but the fact Kirishima seemed just as amused alleviated that. Even Izuku had a small smile on his face, even if he was apologetic.
"S-Sorry –"
"Stop apologizing. It's cool dude. There's no point holding back. We aren't gonna improve our Quirks by pulling punches. Or kicks, in your case. Besides, it'll heal up before long."
"So, what're you working on, Kirishima? I didn't think there'd be much you could do with your Quirk aside from getting it to be tougher." Mina blinked and tilted her head in question. Hardening was a cool Quirk, but she couldn't think of any ways that she could improve it herself. It was straightforward, but limited fundamentally. She was interested in what he had in mind.
"That's pretty much what I'm working on. I wanna tank more hits for longer. There isn't really much else I can do with my Quirk, but All Might said I should focus on what I've got and just try to force my way through stuff. So, that's my plan."
"That's… About what I expected, honestly."
"Like I said. I don't have a ton of options."
"Fuck off and die!"
A crackling blast suddenly erupted overhead, as the sound of an intense and enormous explosion eradicated whatever target Bakugou had been training with to absolute smithereens. The three of them turned their heads upwards, towards the plateau the Explosion Quirk user had claimed as his own training grounds, seeing smoke rise from the smouldering wreck that was once either a clone of Ectoplasm, or a thick piece of concrete made courtesy of Cementoss.
"…Is it just me, or does he sound more pissed off than usual?" Mina asked, blinking a couple of times as some light debris landed a small distance away
Over the last few days of training, Bakugou had been just as active as anyone else, launching off explosion after explosion after explosion, destroying pretty much anything that had the misfortune of being his target. As was normal for him, he was working at breakneck pace, demolishing anything in his pursuit to become stronger and stronger.
People gave him a wider berth than usual though. And there were two reason. The first being that none of them wanted to get in his way when he was on the warpath with his training. That had pretty much been the standard since first met the guy.
And the other… Was the revelation of his treatment of Izuku. It had changed their perspectives on him. Changed what they felt about him. And what they felt was…
…Difficult to pinpoint.
Hatred wasn't the word to describe what they felt towards their classmate. They were all concerned enough about him during the rescue operation, and none of them wished any specific harm to come to him. But at the same time, the revelation changed things a bit, and made it harder to morally ascertain what they thought about him. The best word would be uncertainty. Bakugou had always been the odd one out in 1A, vicious, anti-social and violent in a class full of people who were calm, friendly, and more than happy to socialize with just about everyone else in their class. They had grown used to his vicious ways, and had grown to believe that his bark was far bigger than his bite. He never seemed to act on his treats, and after a while, people just stopped taking them seriously.
Given the new information that Izuku revealed about his Quirk, and the revelation about how Bakugou tormented him… It was a fundamentally damaging image to have of someone. There really wasn't getting around that.
It… Changed how people looked at him. Some felt more hostile than others, and others…
Others didn't know anything at all.
"…Hey, Midoriya? Can I ask you something?" Kirishima questioned, not taking his eyes away from the plateau.
"Huh? Uh, sure. What is it?"
"…What's your deal with Bakugou?
Mina felt her eyes open up wider.
"Huh?"
"I mean… What d'you think of him?" Kirishima clarified. "We all knew that you weren't exactly friends, and that he had some kinda problem with you… But I didn't think that it ever went any deeper than that. I don't think anyone could've guessed that you were Quirkless before you came to Yuuei, but….As anti-social as he was, it just seemed insane to think that someone who got into the Hero Course was as vicious as he was to you, especially when you were Quirkless… And you defended him still. Yuuei could've kicked him out if you said the word, but you didn't… So… Why?"
For a second, Izuku didn't respond. He just kind of stared back at Kirishima, and then looked up towards Bakugou's training platform. He watched as a few more explosions went off as his old childhood friend trained, and pushed himself harder than he'd ever seen before.
"…I don't know if I've explained it before to everyone, but I do… Admire Kacchan, for how strong and tenacious he is. I didn't have a Quirk, but… Pretty much all my life, there was this person with an incredible Quirk, and someone who just refused to slow down or stop, and wanted to become as strong as he could to become the next big Hero… He was basically everything I wanted to be. I think that's why I stuck around him while we were younger. And… That hasn't changed."
Izuku looked away from the platform, and down towards his gloved hand, like One For All was a visible entity for him to look at.
"Even after everything that he's done, I've never stopped wanting to surpass him. And… I can't do that if he's not here. That's… One of the selfish reasons I didn't want to get him thrown out… But that aside?"
He looked towards Kirishima, and towards Mina.
"…I think people can make mistakes. And I think that if someone is trying – I mean, really trying – Then… they should at least be given a chance to see what comes of them." He scratched the back of his head again. "T-Though I guess, since we were both kidnapped, I might have a more lenient view on him. He – He did help me escape a-after all, so I guess maybe I-I feel like I owe him a little… But I… I want to see what he'll do. And if… Well, if anything can change between us."
The real reason was that there was no one reason. There were little bits of different reasons that added up together for when he made his final choice. Feelings that he'd adopted over the years, thoughts that he'd carried throughout most of his abused life, and slightly maybe even warped feelings of what his relationship with Bakugou was. Mina couldn't necessarily say she agreed, but she could understand why Izuku felt that way.
Kirishima looked at Izuku, and then he looked up at the plateau.
"…Hey, Bakugou!"
There were a couple of seconds before his yell got any response. Bakugou stood on the edge of his standing, looking down at the three of them. He seemed to pause for a few seconds, before shooting down a "What the fuck do you want?!"
"Ashido's back and I think she and Midoriya need to go over some team stuff, and I need a training partner! How strong d'ya think your Quirk is after all that training?!"
"First thing you say to me in weeks and you're already making me wanna kill you?!"
"So, that's a yes then?!"
"Izuku couldn't help but smile and even laugh as both Kirishima and Bakugou yelled at one another. For a little while, it felt like nothing had changed.
Not for Izuku, anyway.
Mina… She didn't know what to think.