Apprehension

Training log updated.

Take a breath. The next test is already starting.

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The softball sat in my palm like a bad decision with stitching.

Behind me, Class 1-A waited. Attention had weight. Twenty people watching made the air feel thick, especially after Bakugo had launched his ball so far the number still hung over the field.

Eight hundred and seventy-two meters.

Aizawa did not repeat it. He did not need to.

Canon Izuku had broken a finger and earned a smile. I had a damaged finger, a shoulder that hated sudden ambition, and a teacher whose idea of encouragement seemed to be paperwork with teeth.

"Any time," Aizawa said.

I rolled the ball once in my hand.

The old answer was useless. Break finger, throw impossible number, prove control by sacrifice. Dramatic. Memorable. Stupid, when the teacher already knew I chose injury too easily.

I stepped into a pitcher's stance instead.

Feet. Hip. Shoulder. Wrist. No full arm. No finger detonation.

Bakugo scoffed behind me.

"Throw the damn ball, Deku."

"Language," Iida said automatically.

"Die."

"Also language."

Uraraka made a worried sound and then swallowed it, like she did not want to become part of the pressure.

I breathed out. The borrowed power answered under my skin, green and quiet. Smaller. Smaller than pride wanted.

I let it touch my legs first, then my waist. My shoulder tried to tense around the injury. I relaxed it before fear could turn into force.

Then I threw.

For half a second, the ball moved like an ordinary ball. Then the stored power caught the release and snapped it forward.

It cut a clean line into the sky.

No explosion. No broken finger. No screaming.

I stayed standing. Mostly.

My shoulder burned deep enough that I bit the inside of my cheek. Aizawa looked at the tablet. The class leaned without meaning to.

"Seven hundred and six meters," he said.

Noise hit the field in pieces.

"With a normal throw?" Kaminari said.

"It wasn't normal," Jiro muttered.

Kirishima grinned before he caught my face. "Man, that's wild."

Uraraka looked at my hand, not the sky.

Bakugo did not speak. The silence said more than an insult would have. The number was lower than his. High enough to matter. Worse, it looked controlled.

I flexed the taped finger once. Pain answered, but not fracture pain.

"Midoriya," Aizawa said.

"Yes, sir?"

"How much did you hold back?"

The field went quieter.

"Enough to keep the finger," I said.

Aizawa's eyes narrowed. Not approval. Not certainty. Just a mark made in the margin.

"Specific answer."

"Specific injury, sir."

His tablet clicked off in his hand.

"Next event."

Somehow, not pressing was worse.

The fifty-meter dash came next. Iida demolished the field with engines roaring in clean, controlled bursts, then tried very hard not to look pleased. Bakugo ran fast and violent, explosions correcting each stride. Todoroki barely looked like he was trying, ice blooming under his feet with insulting calm.

Then my turn.

I did not chase first place. My body could fake speed for a second. It could not sustain it without the bill arriving mid-run, and sprinting like a desperate idiot would teach Aizawa exactly the wrong lesson.

Less than one percent through calves. Short bursts. No jump.

The whistle blew.

I moved. The first ten meters felt good. Too good. My right leg wanted more immediately, a hungry little pull that made restraint feel like cowardice.

I held back.

The second burst carried me across the line with a time that made the tablet beep and my calf twitch in protest. Strong. Not best. Survivable.

Aizawa looked at the result for one beat too long.

The side-step test came next, then grip strength, then seated toe touch. Some scores were strong from ten months of training. Some were painfully ordinary. The toe touch insulted me on a personal level.

Kirishima slapped his thighs after one event and laughed.

"This school doesn't mess around."

"It is the first day," Yaoyorozu said, breathless but composed. "The data baseline is probably intentional."

"That's a fancy way to say they're finding weak spots."

"Yes."

"Cool. Terrifying, but cool."

I liked them more than was safe.

Every joke became a thing that could be lost. Every complaint came with shadows I had no right to pin on people who had only just become real.

"Midoriya. Standing long jump."

I stepped up.

This one was dangerous.

A jump invited more power. More power invited damage. Damage invited attention, and attention had already brought a clipboard.

I flexed my toes inside my shoes. No answer came from anywhere except muscle, pain, and fear.

Knees bent. Power through legs only. Small. Controlled. Let momentum carry, not pride.

I jumped.

For an instant, it worked.

Green flickered. The field dropped away. My landing point stretched farther than it should have.

Then Aizawa's hair rose.

The power cut out midair.

It did not vanish like a switch. It vanished like a bridge disappearing after I had already stepped onto it.

My stomach lurched.

My body had prepared for reinforcement. Suddenly it was just a body, already committed to a landing it could not afford. I twisted hard to keep my shoulder from taking the hit.

Bad choice.

Better than breaking my face.

I hit the sand pit sideways and rolled out with half the grace of a thrown laundry bag. Pain flashed through my ribs. Someone cursed. It might have been me.

Uraraka took one step forward before stopping herself.

Iida's hand chopped up, then froze because he did not know whether this counted as procedure or emergency.

Jiro's earphone jack snapped against her wrist.

Bakugo's eyes widened for a fraction. Not satisfaction. Recognition.

He knew what it looked like when power failed mid-motion.

Aizawa's scarf settled.

I pushed myself up slowly. My ribs objected. My leg trembled. My shoulder sent a private letter of complaint.

"You cut it," I said, before my mouth learned caution.

Aizawa walked over, hands in his pockets.

"You noticed."

"Hard to miss in the air."

"Most first-years only notice the ground."

"I noticed that too."

A few people laughed because they needed somewhere to put the tension. It died quickly.

Aizawa looked at my stance, not my face.

"You protected the shoulder before the fall finished."

"It was already hurt."

"I didn't ask why."

There was the trap. Or maybe it was only a question and I had forgotten the difference.

"Yes, sir."

His eyes were red around the edges now, dry and irritated. The capture weapon rested loose at his neck. He looked tired, unimpressed, and horribly awake.

"My Quirk is Erasure," he said to the class. "If I look at you, most emitter and transformation Quirks stop. Momentum does not stop. Gravity does not care. Bad decisions still land."

The field stayed quiet.

He turned the tablet in his hand.

"Continue."

I stood there a second too long.

"Midoriya," Uraraka said softly.

I walked back into line.

"Are you okay?" she asked when I reached her.

"I have learned I dislike landing."

"Midoriya."

"Ribs hurt. Shoulder is angry. I can walk."

Her mouth tightened, but she nodded. Better answer. Still not enough.

Iida leaned forward from her other side.

"Teacher interference during a measurement test is unusual."

"U.A. unusual or lawsuit unusual?" Kaminari whispered.

"Both," Jiro said.

Bakugo said nothing. His silence followed me through the rest of the test.

By the end, my scores made a strange shape. High enough in burst events to prove potential. Low enough in sustained control to show limits. Excellent in adaptation, though that was not supposed to be an event and Aizawa's eyes kept weighing it anyway.

When the final rankings appeared, no one breathed.

I was not first.

Todoroki stood near the top with ridiculous quiet. Bakugo ranked high enough to look insulted anyway. Iida's mobility numbers were clean. Yaoyorozu's overall balance was excellent.

I landed fourth.

Relief hit first. Suspicion followed.

Canon had taught me that last place was the drama. Real life preferred subtler problems.

Aizawa turned the tablet so we could see the full list. Last place was Mineta, who made a strangled noise.

"As promised," Aizawa said, "last place faces expulsion."

The class stiffened.

I watched his face. Same line. Same deadpan. Different room. Different me. Canon said this was a rational deception.

Canon did not have to pass today's test.

Aizawa looked at me, then at the class.

"It was a rational deception."

The air came back in a rush. Mineta almost folded in half. Kirishima groaned loud enough for three people.

"That's not manly, sir!"

"Reality isn't obligated to be manly."

Uraraka pressed a hand to her chest. I almost smiled.

Then Aizawa kept talking.

"But if any of you treat survival like a performance, I will remove you from field work myself."

His gaze crossed the class and stopped on me only briefly.

"Heroics built on self-destruction are just delayed cleanup."

No one laughed.

He did not know everything. He did not know All Might. He did not know the impossible truth under my skin. But he knew enough to see a pattern, and that was already dangerous.

Class ended with instructions for syllabi, recovery schedules, and a warning that tomorrow's heroics class would involve combat simulation.

The others started talking as we walked back toward the building, louder now that nobody had actually been expelled. I fell half a step behind.

My leg hurt. My shoulder hurt. The future hurt in a place I could not stretch.

Aizawa passed beside me without slowing.

"Midoriya."

"Yes, sir?"

"Your Quirk is powerful."

"Yes."

"Your problem is that you keep checking whether pain approves before you move."

My hand tightened around the gym uniform.

He glanced at me.

"Fix the habit before the habit chooses for you."

Then he walked away.

My body remembered every classroom where standing out had been dangerous. That memory did not vanish because U.A. had better equipment.

Aizawa's stare pinned the whole field down, and for one breath I understood the test less as numbers and more as a question: what did I do when being noticed finally mattered?

Passing U.A. had been the easy part.

Now I had to survive being taught.

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