[Image: "Ika-chan (Ika Sukippu)" by A. Ophelia]

The match between Nioubo and Heihomame, and Ayashima and Sukippu was over fairly quickly. As it turned out, Heihomame's quirk was pretty useful, and he did a decent job at confusing the hero team and getting them turned around so they had a hard time finding the 'bomb' until they found him, and Sukippu used her quirk on him.

It was the first chance Katsumi had to see what Sukippu's quirk was. She'd stuck her fingers in her mouth and pulled something out. It looked a bit like a microSD card, maybe some kind of computer chip, then Ayashima used her telekinesis to put the tiny chip into Heihomame's mouth while he was talking, and he swallowed it by accident, after that, rather than confusing them Heihomame started to lead them to where the bomb was, acting as though it had been his idea.

Nioubo put up a fight once they got to the 'bomb', but Ayashima overpowered him easily, sending both him and his partner out a window and lowering them onto the sidewalk while Sukippu secured the 'bomb'. Despite Ayashima's stupidly overpowered quirk, Katsumi thought that the boys could have stood a decent chance if they's decided to work together and try to capture the girls, rather than trying to waste their time until the exercise was over. In the end, the girls had been the ones who worked together to win, Ayashima helping make best use of Sukippu's quirk, and Sukippu making sure not to idle while her partner did the heavy lifting.

As far as Katsumi could tell, the two girls hadn't spoken to each other at all. They'd probably talked beforehand, but during the drill, they simply did what they had to do, silently carrying out their tasks, barely even looking at each other, but still, somehow, working together seamlessly. Katsumi had privately noticed that Sukippu didn't like to work with people, even though she acted nice, but it was a little odd to see Ayashima that way. Honestly, Katsumi was having a really hard time figuring that girl out. She seemed to act differently every time Katsumi observed her.

The next exercise had Ayumu and Okane as the 'villains', and Kusabana and Hiretsuna as the 'heroes'. Okane used her camouflage ability to sneak up on Kusabana and capture him within the first two minutes, but she couldn't seem to find Hiretsuna anywhere, even though the cameras showed that he walked past right in front of her. Okane and Ayumu talked for a moment, thinking up strategies to find Hiretsuna, whom they guessed had a similar quirk to Okane. (From Katsuki's outsider point of view, it seemed like his quirk only allowed him to be invisible to people, since the cameras showed him just fine, unlike Okane, who was much harder to spot on tape, though not impossible.)

In the end, Ayumu suggested using his Time-Out quirk to just pause time for the last five minutes, and executed that plan just moments before Hiretsuna secured the bomb. Unfortunately, his quirk timed-out just before the clock did, and Hiretsuna managed to capture the 'bomb' with seconds to spare. So far, that had been the closest match.

The last matchup was a three-on-three: Hexum, Kisho, and Omisha as the 'heroes' vs. Uchikatsu, Hansho, and Chirin as the 'villains'; the two groups Katsumi had been most interested in watching were up against each other.

Knowing that Hexum's quirk would allow him to determine where the 'bomb' was more or less right out of the gate, Hansho proposed that they all station themselves near the 'bomb' rather than spreading themselves too thin. Hansho and Hexum had rooms on the same floor, so Hansho had already made an effort to get to know his neighbor, and learned a lot about him.

Chirin used some of the invisible creatures that she summoned with her quirk to guard the 'bomb' directly, that way they wouldn't have to worry about it too much, and could focus on defeating the enemy in front of them. Hansho led the girls in stretches while they waited for the other team to reach the top floor. It took about two minutes with Hexum using his sonic quirk to find the 'bomb' as expected, and the instant the door to the room opened, it was full on battle mode.

Hexum was the biggest threat to the 'villain' team, both in terms of quirk and physical strength, so Hansho jumped him as soon as he could and got his instrument away from him, then got his capture tape in his hand and engaged him in combat, dodging a weaving, kicking him in the jaw when he started to hum and let his guard down for a split second, then wrapping the capture tape around him when he stumbled.

Meanwhile, Kisho had transformed into a snake and sprang out to bite Chirin, knowing that her quirk would be the most trouble for the 'hero' team, and banking on the possibility that it would lose effect if Chirin was unconscious due to a venomous snake bite. She wasn't counting on Uchikatsu stepping in front of her and taking the snake bite in her stead, and she definitely wasn't expecting the snake bite to have seemingly no affect at all on Uchikatsu, who grabbed Kisho by the neck and shook her until she turned back into a human so the capture tape would stick better.

Omisha had tried to sneak around the edges of the room, but was stopped before she could reach the bomb by Chirin's invisible minions, who held her tightly until their master used the capture tape. The drill was over in just under six minutes, with a clear victory by the 'villain' team, and everyone regrouped in the observation room.

"Well done, everyone," All Might said. "Young Uchikatsu, shouldn't you go to the infirmary? I don't think you should leave that bite untreated."

"I'll be fine," Uchikatsu disagreed, shaking her head. "I wanna hear the assessment."

"All the same, you really should see recovery girl," He insisted, eyebrows stitching together though his signature smile didn't waver. Katsumi wondered if maybe his face was stuck that way.

"I'll go after this is over. It's the last class of the day, anyway," Uchikatsu said, and All Might seemed to accept that, although Katsumi suspected she was lying to make him get on with it.

"You all did very well," All Might told them, clapping his hands together once. "I can see where you excel, and what you still need to work on. Now for the assessments. Though their team won, I'm afraid the worst assessment goes to Kusabana and Hiretsuna. Can anyone guess why?" No one answered. No one wanted to be the one to say: 'because Kusabana got taken out right away and Hiretsuna took the 'bomb' by sheer luck'.

"You failed to work together as a team," All Might told them, "and because of that, one of you ended up having to take on the exercise alone and barely managed to capture the 'bomb'. You were placed in a team together because at the moment, you're the only two people in the class who can properly understand each other, but you still didn't communicate, and communication is essential for heroes, especially now that villains are working in groups more and more often, and heroes have trouble dealing with these kinds of groups alone.

"The best assessments must go to Suzuki and Hansho," All Might continued. "Does anyone want to venture a guess for this one?" This time, Oribunoki raised her hand and All Might handed the floor over to her.

"Is it because they really tried to get in the heads of a villain?" Oribunoki guessed. "I don't know about Hansho, but I know Suzuki was really thorough with her planning, and managed to step into her role really well. And I did notice that Hansho put a lot of thought into his group's plan too, even though it was totally different from ours."

"That's correct," All Might said. "Though they didn't do it in the same way, the reason these two stood out during this exercise is because they both won because they knew their enemy. Suzuki was able to adopt the mindset of villains as a whole and develop a plan based on that, and Hansho put together a plan based on what he knew about his opponents for this exercise specifically, and in the end, they both managed to gain victory for their teams."

"Can you really endorse what Suzuki did though?" Uchikatsu asked. "It's one thing to consider what a villain might do, but to lay it out like she did? To give someone a comprehensive rundown of villain behavior, and then emulate it so easily? That's not, I don't know, suspicious to you? You don't think you should maybe discourage a student who suggests murder?"

"I didn't suggest murder." Katsumi frowned pointedly. It would seem that her classmates had watched her and Oribunoki's preparations after all. "In fact, I explicitly suggested that we not murder."

"Now you mention it, it's kinda creepy that she knows that stuff, but I don't think it's a problem if she uses it to become a good hero," Chirin proposed. "And she's here, so that must be her intention, right?"

"Although she did tell Mr. Aizawa on the first day, that she didn't want to be in the hero course in the first place," Heihomame remembered with absolutely horrible timing.

"That was then," Katsumi argued. "I've changed my mind."

"Now students," All Might interrupted in an attempt to placate them. "Though you may find Suzuki's knowledge disconcerting, you can't deny that she can make excellent use of it as a hero, and however you may have come here, that's what all of you are training to be: heroes."

No one argued with him after that. Katsumi wrapped her arms around herself and tried to hide in the corner, avoiding the eyes that shifted awkwardly in her direction, but still intensely aware of them. Though she had said she'd changed her mind about not wanting to be in the hero course, and she had, she desperately didn't want to be there at that moment. She was getting those looks again. The ones from elementary school when people learned her dad was in jail, the ones she always got when she visited the police station with Ayane, like she was a villain just waiting to strike, even though she wasn't, even though she was trying to be a hero.

Words can't describe the relief she felt when All Might dismissed them to the locker rooms to change and the day's classes were officially over so she could hide in her room, or maybe turn into a bird and fly all the way home for a few hours. Maybe she'd go visit Ayane's dorm for a while. Anywhere so long as she didn't have to endure those looks anymore.

[I'm still having laptop troubles, but I managed to get a chapter together for y'all anyway, so you're welcome. If you were wondering what the heck happened to this fic, laptop troubles happened and are still happening, which makes it very difficult to write anything without it crashing on me, so be grateful that this exists at all. Love y'all.

<3 Raaor!]