Something Takara learns very quickly is that U.A. teachers don't mess around, no matter the subject. The first day of real classes gives her a good idea of the expectations they're meant to live up to. Never in her life would she expect to learn so much in a five hour period, but she tries her best.

During lunch, she and Aiya cross check their notes with Kaede's. Sugita joins them to help explain the concepts they don't understand.

"Literally, who invented chemistry?" Takara exclaims in frustration, throwing her pencil at her notebook.

"Somebody who hated you very much," Sugita replies sarcastically as he hands her pencil back.

"Well, whoever it is, I'm gonna go back in time and slap them," Aiya mumbles under her breath as she copies the notes.

Takara taps her eraser against the rungs of her notebook. "Kaede, how are your notes so neat?"

"Yeah, I'm writing so fast, my words just blend together," Aiya gripes.

"I don't know," Kaede says, blushing. "It's just my handwriting. Plus, I'm not squishing everything together in the margins like you, Aiya."

"Don't doubt my system."

"You were the one complaining about it."

"My handwriting, not my notes."

"Just write slower."

Aiya rolls her eyes with a huff. "As if that's a solution. I'll just miss what Chemex is saying."

Kaede returns the eye roll even more exaggeratedly.

"Ka-a-aede..." Takara whines, garnering the girl's attention. "I can't find palladium on here."

The redheaded pixie scans through the periodic table set between them and quickly points out the desired element. "We should do our homework together this evening so all this searching goes quicker."

"Please."

•°•☆•°•

When lunch finally ends, it's time for the students of 1-A to change into their gym uniforms and make their way to a building called Gym Gamma.

In front of the class is a man who stands at least seven feet tall who very clearly has a dragon quirk. His grey, scaly skin is decorated with red war paint. A set of tusks protrudes from his square jaw, arcing forward. His slitted red eyes stare down the class as his long spiked tail flicks back and forth.

Takara recognizes the pro hero who had topped at 4th on the charts in Japan. "It's Gila," she exclaims in an excited whisper to Kaede who stands starstruck beside her.

"I knew he was teaching here, but wow!" The redhead bounces on her toes, attracting the attention of the teacher. His ruby eyes fixate on her as his large ears twitch atop his hairless head.

"Something the matter, girl?" Gila asks in a deep tone that sets the ground beneath them rumbling.

Kaede's smile falters under his intimidating presence. She quickly composes herself and exclaims, "You're one of my favorite heroes! I'm so excited to learn from you!"

The students look back and forth between the two, tension palpable. After a few heartbeats, Gila's lips stretch into a smile, showing off his dulled teeth. A thunderous laugh reverberates around the room from his giant dragon-like body.

"You could all learn a thing or two from your classmate here," he says, a friendly smile spreading naturally over his angular face. "She stayed positive in the face of an intimidating presence. It's my job to make you all proficient in combat, but that also entails how to deal with your actual opponent. Take it to heart that, as bad as things get, your job is to provide hope. Situations may be dire, but even a small smile can make a difference to the people you are protecting."

He clasps his clawed hands behind him, standing tall. "This will not be an easy class. You'll be expected to perform at the best of your abilities. Some days, it may feel like death. What's important is that you keep pushing yourselves."

His angular eyes flash the color of blood. "Let's begin."

Gila starts the class with what he calls "basic training:" stretches, sit ups, push ups, squats, and burpees, followed by a 5k run. The class groans in exhaustion when he bellows he's going easy on them, all while crawling on all fours behind the runners, growling and snapping at their ankles.

Takara is thankful she's not in the back of the pack. Endo yelps every time Gila's jaws snap closed behind her, causing her shadows to flare and roil restlessly. The brunette's calves ache in sympathy.

When they've taken a water break and caught their breath, the dragon hero calls his class back together. He and Sensei McCaffery demonstrate several very simple hand-to-hand combat techniques for the students to try.

First on the docket is teaching them to throw a proper punch. The teachers go around, adjusting people's form as they see fit.

"You'll break your hand like this," McCaffery explains to Araya. "You need to line up your first two knuckles with your arm."

"But what does that mean?" the boy asks, looking down at his clenched fists.

McCaffery gestures for Araya to punch the air in front of him, then points to his wrist. "You see these two bones that poke up? And how they're in line with the two bones in your forearm? Your first two knuckles should keep the line going, not the second two. Look down your arm and you should see a continuous line."

Takara watches as a couple students adjust their form to fit his instruction.

"And then tilt your hand down a bit," he explains, doing the same. He pats his hand where it would make contact with an imaginary villain. "Like I said, you need to hit with these knuckles. They create a direct line that the force can travel down. Like poking a toothpick down at an angle versus straight up and down. One of them will snap much easier than the other, right?"

Students murmur their agreement, and he continues. "This is the most effective way to protect your bones under the force of a punch. You'll hurt yourself if you use any others."

He steps back and nods at the boy. "Now try again."

Araya settles into his stance and sends a jab at the air. Sensei smiles, his sunken eyes twinkling. "Better. Now practice until you can't get it wrong."

Later in the class, Takara gets paired up with Araya to practice with an actual target. He slips his hands into target gloves and holds them up for Takara to get used to making contact with her fist. They run through their training, the teachers still milling around and making corrections.

Toward the end of class, they're allowed to spar without quirks, using what they've learned. Takara, even though not totally proficient in kickboxing, feels rather evenly matched with Araya, whose animal-like reflexes make him quite the opponent.

She is not at all envious of Sugita who spars with Ozaki on the next mat over. The sunflower boy's technique is impeccable. Intensity burns in his deep eyes. Takara had overheard him saying that he's had training, but she begins to think he was downplaying exactly how skilled he is.

•°•☆•°•

After their hero class, the students have to attend math class before they are released for the day. The only thing on Takara's mind as she returns to the Heights Alliance is a nice hot shower and a relaxing afternoon. But, as the elevator door dings open, her thoughts are interrupted as she's greeted by a new face.

A large grey dog sprints down the third floor hallway and barrels into the girl, almost knocking her off her feet. It looks up expectantly as she bends down to pet it.

"Fuji!" Ohara calls from down the hallway, pigtails bouncing as she runs over. "Get back here!" The dog obediently runs to her side and sits as the girl pushes a stray hair from her eyes. "Sorry about that."

"It's fine," Takara exclaims in response. "I didn't know you have a dog!"

"Had," Ohara corrects, looking away.

The girl is confused for a moment before looking back to the canine in front of her. She notices it standing perfectly still, like a statue. It's not even breathing or blinking.

"Oh..." she gasps out, the realization dawning on her that this is a copy from the girl's quirk.

"I lost him a few years ago and decided to use a picture I had taken of him to bring him back. I put everything I had into creating him," Ohara says in a surprisingly quiet tone, scratching tenderly behind the dog's ears. "I can't bring myself to...you know..."

The image of her slicing a copy's throat and it turning to ink surfaces in Takara's mind. "I get it."

"We should go," Ohara says, her steely tone returning. Takara notices a faraway look in the girl's misty eyes as she instructs Fuji to heel.

As the girl and the dog board the elevator, Takara returns to her room, thinking about how close Ohara must've been with her dog. She ponders how the copy of Fuji seems to have some sort of personality, especially since the copy of Endo that Ohara had created during training seemed so zombie-like.

She pushes open the door to her balcony and breathes in the fresh air, watching Ohara play fetch with her dog on the lawn. The girl's joyful voice floats up to Takara on a breeze.

And Takara can't believe her eyes. This is the first smile she's seen from the small girl.

•°•☆•°•

Takara and Araya work together on dinner tonight, making a simple stir fry that they figure should appease their classmates. The night prior, Morita had found it astounding that so many people didn't know how to cook, so she had enlisted Ohara to put together a cookbook with easy recipes that their classmates could pick and choose for each dinner.

Ohara apparently has a giant scrapbook collection, what with her quirk and affinity for photography, so she lent an empty one to the class and helped organize the recipes as Morita found and printed them.

Araya once again consults the printout as Takara finishes cutting the last of the vegetables. "Alright, so we've got both pans ready," he narrates, dragging his finger along the page.

"Check!" Takara brings two bowls over, one with chicken strips and another with diced tofu. She places one down on either side of the stove, next to their respective pans.

"I guess we put the oil in now?"

"That's probably a good call."

They both begin working in their own pans, Takara every now and then freaking out that something is going horribly wrong while Araya looks on in mild confusion, fuzzy ears twitching at every sound.

By the time they have finished and plated the meal, Takara is practically shaking. "Why did that have to be so nerve wracking?"

"I don't know," Araya admits in response, bringing his serving dish to the main counter and placing it next to hers. He takes his hair out of its ponytail and shakes his shaggy mane out. "You should take your time, next go around."

"But everything needed to be put in at a specific time!" the girl exclaims, getting some plates out. "I don't think I'll be hired as a chef anytime soon."

"Good thing you've already got a career ahead of you," Araya responds, grabbing a plate off the top of the stack. He sticks his head out the doorway to the living room, announcing that dinner is ready before returning to serve himself.

"Ooh, I'm so ready!" Kaede exclaims, bare feet padding as she skips through the door. "Smells delicious, Kara!"

Takara scoops herself some of both the chicken and tofu versions. While Kaede and her sister are vegetarians, Takara loves any food they'll put in front of her.

The class sits down to eat, engaging in a lively discussion about their first day of classes and all the pro heroes they get to learn from.

"McCaffery seems knowledgeable," Ohara remarks.

Sugita hums in agreement. "It'll be good to get perspectives from other countries' hero programs. Who knows what they do differently."

"They probably don't have pro heroes teaching calculus," Aiya says. "What's that about?"

"It's a school by heroes, for heroes," Kaede reasons. "They probably know what's best."

"Which is why Gila threw us into the deep end of training?" Endo harrumphs.

"He really doesn't mess around," Araya states.

Kaede bounces in her chair. "But he's totally cool in the way he pushes us!"

"Tell that to my ankles," Endo says morosely. She looks down at her food, her shadowy form undulating below her glowing blue exoskeleton.

"I mean, if it gets us to run faster, we'll probably be stronger for it..." Takara trails off, eating contentedly, to which the shadow girl clenches her fist. Her shadows strain against the light as if trying to break free. She doesn't say another word, but her entire body seems at war with itself as she takes a big bite of her food, chewing furiously.

The brunette shares a glance with her friends before turning to Endo. "Hey, I'm sorry. You really do great out there, the way you keep going–"

"What?" The girl snaps, her dark hair flaring out. The shadowy tendrils sweep at the faces of those around her as she continues. "Because I just take his abuse? Because I'm the worst in the class, so the teachers automatically target me?"

"Don't say–"

"It's only the first day, and these heroes are already picking favorites," Endo whimpers, gaining the attention of the rest of the class. "Maybe I didn't know what I was getting into. 'Cause sorry I'm not likeable like the rest of you. Sorry I just wanted to learn!"

Her shadows have almost completely overtaken her glowing exoskeleton, raging outside her form as well as within. She stands and brings her plate to the kitchen, mumbling, "I've lost my appetite."

The class sits in silence as she cleans her dishes and runs up the stairs.

Featured Character: Flynn McCaffery
Quirk: Reaper
Likes: The Ocean

Featured Character: Gila
Quirk: Dragon
Likes: Collecting Cool Rocks