Everything had gone dark, like his body had been completely swallowed by shadows. It was a feeling like nothing he had ever felt. His senses were blurred and even his quirk was blindsided. The world felt like static. It took him several seconds to clear the feeling, and when he did, he realized he was falling. From somewhere nearby he heard someone scream. From the sounds of it, she was close, and falling just as fast.

Finally gaining full consciousness of the situation, (L/N) reached a hand towards his classmate and caught them in a bubble of light inches before hitting the ground. He didn't have control enough over his quirk to stop himself, but he managed to shield the brunt of the impact before he crashed into hard stone, several rocks breaking against the light surrounding his body.

"(L/N)!"

A pair of hands cleared away the stones and snow that had covered his body after he fell into the mountainside.

"Are you okay?"

"Ashido?" He asked, shaking his head. "Is that you?"

"Yeah, it's me." The girl replied. "Are you alright?"

"I'll be okay."

"Don't be so sure." A voice called from somewhere nearby.

The sounds of sinister laughter echoed throughout the blizzard zone as villains emerged from behind the rocks and over mountain peaks. They were surrounded.

"I got first dibs!" The same voice said. "Alright kiddies, I'm gonna drop this mountain on ya!"

A large man with a strength enhancement quirk lunged towards the two students, his right fist cocked as he prepared to strike the two down. Ashido squealed and turned her face away, causing the man to laugh. Without thinking, (L/N) pushed Ashido behind him with his right arm while at the same time getting to his feet. His left hand glowed and caught the villain's fist. He managed to stop it, but the force behind the attack rattled his arm and made his shoulder ache. The villain stared at (L/N) in confused surprise.

(L/N) was scared of his own power. Scared of what it could do. After his parents' death he swore he would never use his quirk again. But he couldn't control it. The power was too great for the young boy to control and he couldn't stop it coursing from his body. Many times, when he was scared or upset, a powerful surge of energy would ripple from his body throughout the room, overturning furniture and cracking the walls and ceiling. As he grew older his quirk grew more powerful, and with no one to teach him how to control it, he instead suppressed it. He realized he couldn't control the quirk itself, but he could control the factors that caused it to manifest. His emotions, fear and stress in particular, but sometimes excitement, happiness, and anger. It caused the energy in his body to spike and his quirk to express itself, so he was careful to keep his emotions in check. He didn't want to hurt anyone. But right now, he didn't have a choice.

He placed his right palm on the man's chest. A blast of light carried the man into the sky. (L/N) had to be careful though, even with something as seemingly simple as this. Light doesn't stop travelling. Ever. So, unless he consciously made the photons dissipate, his blasts would travel indefinitely, whether he wanted them to or not. Once the villain was some thirty feet in the air, (L/N) forced the energy to stop. He had learned this much on his own quest to master his powers. With nothing propelling him further, the villain fell back towards the earth, landing with a loud crash.

[My Hero Academia]

My name is Watanabe Hikaru and I am a villain. My quirk, Absorption, allows me to take on the properties of anything I touch. I can make my body hard as stone or flexible as water. I got my start as a criminal robbing my first jewelry store when I was twenty-seven. I wasn't your run of the mill crook, though. I wasn't in it for the money. I wanted the unique properties only precious gemstones could provide. Diamond skin to make me bulletproof. Tungsten to resist Endeavor's flames. I'd had my fair share of run ins with the police, even tussled with a few pros in my time, but after nine years of taking precious gems I was still a free man. Never did I think that some kid would be my downfall.

I watched as my comrade was propelled through the air by a beam of light. He was strong. Stronger than most of the others that had come with us. My attitudes toward the two students standing before me changed. I shifted my weight, my stance becoming more defensive. The girl didn't seem like she was going to be much of a problem. She was cowering in fear, standing half hidden behind her classmate. It was the other kid, the one with the blindfold that I was more concerned with. Despite the situation he seemed composed. He stood tall and I watched as something akin to white steam rose from his still open palm. His face was full of conviction and from his body language I could tell he was scared. But it was not the same fear that gripped the girl he stood protecting. No, he was not afraid of us. It almost seemed like he was afraid for us.

There we stood on the snow-covered mountain. At least twenty of us, all set to dispatch of two children. He dropped his arm to his side. The way he stood there made my spine shiver. To let his guard down so easily, his quirk must be incredibly strong. Some of the other villains that had been sent with me to the blizzard zone weren't quite as intuitive. They took the lowering of his hand to signal an opening for them to exploit. They were wrong. Three of our number lunged at them, one on the right, one on the left, and one jumping from the higher ground behind them. They grinned viciously, so assured of themselves. Of their victory. They couldn't even lay a finger on them. They got within ten feet of him before coming to a sudden stop, running face first into some invisible wall. He used the few seconds it took for them to recover to strike. Three more beams of light radiated from the wall of light itself, sending them flying off in the distance, or else punching them into the mountain on which we stood.

In hindsight, that should have been the moment I gave up, but our sheer numbers and my past victories gave me a false sense of security. I reached into one of my jacket's many pockets and pulled out a small diamond. Holding it tightly in my hand, my clenched fist turned to glistening stone, the crystal creeping up my forearm. I ran up to the barrier, another enhancer by my side, and together we delivered a powerful blow that managed to shatter the hardened light. The girl shrieked at the sound, like shattering glass, and the boy visibly faltered, surprised that we had managed to break through his construct.

My confidence had returned. He wasn't as tough as I'd initially thought. I didn't realize until afterwards that we hadn't broken through his wall. He had lowered it. The nature of my quirk meant I specialized in close combat, so I figured I'd have an edge, so long as I didn't stand still long enough for him to hit me with one of his rays of light. But when the enhancer next to me fell to the floor, I saw his fist glowing with power. I barely managed to turn my jaw to diamond when his punch connected with the side of my face. Even though my skin was at the time made of the hardest substance on earth, my brain shook in my head at the power behind his strike. If I hadn't reacted in time I might have been killed.

With the barrier down, a few villains with ranged quirks took their opening and opened fire on the students. The projectiles appeared to make contact, but they glanced off at angles leaving no visible damage to either of them. Once again, the boy with the blindfold protected them, this time with glowing white auras that encased their bodies.

I felt a large hand on my shoulder push me out of the way. A large man, seven feet tall took to the frontline.

"Get out of the way or die!" He shouted. "I'm bringing this place down!"

He planted his feet with a heavy stomp and brought his hands back until they were under his shoulders. With great effort he began to push against the air. The ground beneath our feet rumbled and shook. We dodged to the sides as the rock underfoot split and began to fall. The mountain began to collapse, and a few of our slower comrades unable to move in time fell, a dozen or so bodies falling into the abyss. The boy and his friend were not amongst them. Instead, he had launched himself into the air, surrounding the girl in a bubble of light that trailed behind him. High into the sky they flew, far out of my range.

Again, the firing squad unleashed a storm of lead while some of the stronger of us threw boulders at the two. Their efforts were futile, the bullets glancing off while the rocks were blasted to dust. I watched as from above us the boy opened his palm. I hardened my body with diamond skin, prepared for another attack, but instead some invisible force pushed me to the side. All around me my colleagues experienced the same thing, like a stone cast in a pool of water, it rippled out and pushed us back, creating a sizeable gap in the center of our group. Then came the light.

Like a marble pillar cast down from the heavens, brilliant and blinding. It punched through the mountain and the ground beneath us collapsed, the earth swallowing us whole. As we fell into the pit, I remember staring up at the figure above. He looked like a god, lording over us mortals. The last thing I saw was the hardness of his expression. The conviction. He may have been wearing a blindfold, but still, I could tell; behind it his eyes were full of fire.

Author's Note: (L/N) intentionally lowered the barrier because the reflective properties of Watanabe's diamond arm would have caused a result much like that which occurred with Yaoyorozu during combat training.