ATOMIC STRUGGLE

9「observing」8

(I'm back from my hiatus! Did ya miss me? Lololol)

For the next few days, class A worked on their ultimate moves. Izak got called over a few times, mostly to help out Todoroki since he was having a hard time with the move he was trying to do, but other than that he was sitting it out and hanging out with Mihoko so that she wouldn't feel lonely. 

For Shinso, the past few days were about observing people. Ectoplasm had asked several times what his plan was, but Shinso had just ignored him. When he'd tried to kick him, he just dodged and used his capture weapon to tie him up. "My special move isn't physical, so stop and let me focus. I can work on my capture weapon skills on my own," He muttered as he went back to watching his classmates. 

Midoriya had a habit of clenching his jaw and furrowing his eyebrows, and flexing his hands at times. He also flinched whenever something surprised him, which was something a lot of his classmates did. Aoyama liked to twirl, in that stupid pose of his with his belly front and centre. While he was standing like that, though, his arms would generally move a bit when he thrust his belly out for more momentum. He would tremble like a leaf after going over his limit.

Shoji's dupli-arm skin was almost always moving at some point or other, from what Shinso could see. Tokoyami, instead of flinching when something surprised them like the others, would stiffen up. Koda was very fidgety at any given point. Todoroki's eyebrows furrowed like Midoriya's when he was concentrating, whereas he would flinch if something surprised him. 

Yaoyorozu would also flinch, but more so than others, same with Uraraka. They tended to react more with their bodies. A lot of his classmates reacted without thinking, which meant the general populous most likely also reacted without thinking. 

The person Shinso spent most of his time observing wasn't any of those people, it was Bakugo. He was always flying around, blowing up Ectoplasm's clones, or rocks, or using his explosions to propel himself. But Hitoshi wasn't watching Bakugo's explosions. No, he was watching how his muscles reacted to each move he made, how his abdomen would tense in preparation for something, how his biceps would contract with each explosion he made to propel himself, or how he would move his legs, how he'd grin, how he'd growl, how he'd narrow his eyes, all of it. 

Shinso was preparing himself to go beyond the limits of his quirk, and to do that, he needed to be able to see even the tiniest reaction a person could make, because if he thought about it, a reaction was a response, and his quirk happened when someone responded to a question he had voiced. Now, if he could pull this off, if someone even so much as moved a muscle after he asked a question, he'd be able to take control of their minds just from that, as long as he could recognize that they had moved that muscle. Only time would tell, but Shinso felt pretty confident when he saw Izak give him a nod that night. 

He knew that hiding this from his teachers was bad, and was probably making them sceptical of him, but he just couldn't bring himself to tell them. He was doing this for Izak, not for class, not even to become a better hero. The reason he had even thought about doing this in the first place was because he wanted to surpass Izak's expectations, and for that he knew he needed to go beyond. 

Maybe it was because he knew he would eventually be using this quirk to help Izak in whatever he chose to do, even if what he chose was to stop being a hero and to go live somewhere quietly even while the world hunted for him. If that happened, Hitoshi wanted--needed--the edge that not telling anyone about his plans would give him. 

On the fourth day of training, a slight disturbance occurred when class B showed up earlier than usual. "That's enough class A," Vlad King yelled as he opened the doors. "Class B is scheduled to use this training room every afternoon."

"Class B?" Midoriya, having been down by Kirishima and Kaminari, looked surprised. 

"Aw man, bad timing!" Kaminari complained. 

"Eraser, get your kids out of our way!" Vlad demanded, but Aizawa just deadpanned at him. 

"You're not trying to kick us out early when we have ten whole minutes left, are you?" He gave him a look, causing the other hero to huff, right before the problem child stepped forward with a swoosh. 

"Hey, did ya hear?" Monoma asked. "The licensing exam has a fifty percent passing rate, which means your entire class might fail! Ahahahahahah--" The maniac went into a laughing spell, and Shinso sweat dropped, but narrowed his eyes to focus on how someone moved when they laughed. 

"Unfortunately, his observations are correct," Tokoyami said as dark shadow retreated back inside of him and he straightened. "If we are taking the same exam, then we'll crush each other. That's the hand fate has dealt us," They said like it was some grave matter. 

"And why we won't be at the same location," Aizawa added as Vlad came to stand beside him. "Our classes applied to different spots."

"There are two exam days, in June and in September and the tests are held in three separate places. We don't want students from the same place fighting; we split you up. Each school has at most one class at a single location," Vlad said, and Shinso only noticed it because he was watching the maniac from class B, but Monoma sighed like he was relieved. 

Then he started going off again. "How sad we won't be able to face each other directly, ahahahhaah!"

"This guy's nuts," Kirishima told Kaminari, who agreed. 

"Yeah, I think he's officially gone off the deep end."

"All those other schools, huh," Sero looked down as he stood beside the Ectoplasm clone he had taped into a cocoon. "Interesting, I didn't know that was the case.. So we'll be facing kids from other places."

"Yeah, and on top of that, we're taking the test earlier than most other students," Midoriya piped up, causing Eraserhead to nod. 

"That's true. Very few first years in the country try for a provisional license. In other words," He went on. "The test will be made up of students who have trained longer than you, and with quirks you don't know about, ones that are powerful. The actual content of the exam is a mystery, but you can expect that you're going to have a rough time. Try not to get hung up about that, but keep it in mind," Aizawa warned. 

"Yes sir!" 

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