The first class at U.A. started promptly at eight.
But for Ryota, renting an apartment literally a couple hundred meters away, getting there on time was no problem, even with his morning workout.
He even miscalculated a little and showed up fifteen minutes early.
He did have to wander around the building a bit, though.
It was unclear who built the academy so huge, but they were clearly compensating for something.
The classroom door, almost three human heights tall, hinted at that.
Though maybe it was a design choice in case of students or teachers with size-altering Quirks.
When the guy walked into the classroom, it was already half full.
But no one was in a hurry to make connections.
Except one person.
“Oh, hello! My name is Iida Tenya!”
As soon as Ryota crossed the threshold, this “thing” rushed toward him at full speed.
It sported a ramrod-straight shoulder width, slicked-back hair, and expensive-looking glasses hiding the idiotic, strictly staring eyes.
“You’re the guy who scored 130 points on villains and 50 on rescues, right? Nice to meet you!”
‘Points?
Oh, right…
Something like that, Mic mentioned it and even showed the numbers.’
“Didn’t notice,” Ryota answered coldly.
He ignored the guy’s surprised expression and walked to a free desk in the very back row.
“Uh…”
Whatever Iida was about to say, he didn’t get the chance.
The entrance door slid open with a loud crack, and He appeared on the threshold.
Hair styled like “my head was attacked by nitroglycerin,” a stare that said “you’re all cockroaches at my feet,” and a matching expression.
Katsuki Bakugo.
Another name he didn’t have to strain his memory to recall.
He swaggered in, hands in his pockets.
He had apparently opened the door with his foot.
He walked to the nearest free desk, ignoring all his classmates, sat down, and put his feet up on the desk, tilting his head back.
Of course, the four-eyed, cat-girl-loving guy couldn’t tolerate such liberties.
He rushed off to dispense his brand of justice, completely forgetting about his previous conversation partner (and, again, thank God).
Ryota watched the unfolding spectacle with mild interest, which didn’t show on his face.
Watching long-seen canon events from a different angle was quite entertaining.
Enjoying the show, Ryota missed the moment when the door opened again and a shaggy, green-haired head appeared in the opening.
But he could be forgiven.
The class had already filled up to its maximum with all the other characters, most of whom he couldn’t remember no matter how hard he tried.
The timid gaze of the new actor darted in an attempt to survey the class.
But before it could even start moving, it immediately landed on the arguing Bakugo and Iida.
A new actor joined the comedy, the scope of the plot astonishing.
But then, “BAM.”
“Oh! It’s you! The curly-haired boy!” a joyful voice rang out.
The next moment, the simple comedy transformed into romantic comedy.
At least, the suddenly embarrassed and blushing Midoriya was clearly trying to steer the plot in that direction.
“I wonder, today is the entrance ceremony? Or maybe a small competition?” Uraraka continued to psychologically break Midoriya Izuku.
“Oh, and the teachers, I wonder what they’re like? I’m so excited I can’t stand still!”
“If you’re looking to make friends, you’re in the wrong place,” a voice said.
‘Well, here comes the forest ranger to break everyone up.’
“And this is the hero course faculty,” a person invisible from behind the doorjamb sucked something from what sounded like a sealed tube, “of heroes!”
Slithering into the classroom under the astonished gazes of the teenagers was a Thing.
After a few seconds of fussing on the floor, accompanied by the sound of an unzipping zipper, the Thing opened up, and a homeless man crawled out.
Seriously.
Looking at this unshaven, unkempt skeleton with a dead, exhausted stare (there’s no softer word), the impression was unambiguous and far from positive.
“Hmm…” The skeleton looked at the frozen students with his half-dead gaze.
“It took you eight whole seconds to quiet down.” He dropped the Thing he had been holding onto the floor and walked behind the teacher’s desk.
“Life is short, kids. You could all use a little common sense.”
After that, looking over the students once more, the bum seemed satisfied.
“I’m your homeroom teacher, Aizawa Shota. Nice to meet you.”
From the back rows came a few lonely claps.
Ryota was expressing his gratitude to the actors for a perfectly performed comedy.
***
Ten minutes later, the whole class, led by a mildly annoyed Aizawa, gathered at the stadium.
Yes, the brilliant idea of kicking the students out for PE on the first day of school belonged to the selfless homeroom teacher of 1-A.
The “Quirk Test,” or, in other words, “prove you’re not a loser.” And if you really are a loser, you’re expelled, yada, yada, yada.
“Softball throw, standing long jump, 50-meter dash, endurance run, running broad jump, strength tests, flexibility tests… You’ve all done these in regular schools. Simple physical tests where you weren’t allowed to use your Quirks. Even after several decades, countries haven’t settled on any standards in this regard.” Aizawa scratched his unshaven chin. You are reading on NovelPing, the official source.
“Well, it’s all negligence from our ministries,” he shrugged.
After that, the teacher walked over to a separate box, one of many, and pulled out an ordinary-looking ball.
“Bakugo… how far did you throw a ball in middle school?” he unexpectedly addressed the guy standing a bit ahead.
“67 meters.”
“Throw it using your Quirk.” Aizawa tossed the ball to the student.
“You can do whatever you want as long as you’re in the circle. Don’t hold back.”
“…Wasn’t planning to,” Bakugo answered grimly, cracking his arms.
Weighing the projectile in his hand, the guy wound up like a pitcher and…
“DIE!” …threw.
The throw was undoubtedly good.
Form, proper breathing, a correct body turn, and a bright flash of an explosion in the air that also added some flair.
Meanwhile, Ryota carefully observed Bakugo’s body’s reaction to the close-range explosion.
‘Breathing calm, pupil dilation within normal range, normal reaction to soft sounds, so not deafened.
Looks like I was right.’
“You need to know what you’re capable of,” Aizawa’s calm voice rang out as everyone stared at Bakugo in shock.
Ryota suspected the reason for everyone’s shock was less the force of the throw and more the war cry.
“That’s a pretty standard result for our academy.” The teacher held out the device showing the number 705.2m, obviously the distance the ball had traveled.
‘Hmm…
I think I can show off a little here,’ Ryota smiled internally, looking at the children excited by the prospect of using their powers without limits.
***
The fun, by the way, didn’t last long.
Exactly until the moment Aizawa, radiating DREAD, announced that whoever took last place would be expelled.
At that point, everyone had to try, whether they wanted to or not.
There were quite a few tests.
And Aizawa was clearly too lazy to put all the students through each one.
So the mini-Olympics soon turned into chaos.
Though it might only seem that way on the surface.
Aizawa seemed to choose students and tests completely randomly.
But it always turned out that in that particular sports competition, that particular teenager could demonstrate the maximum potential of their Quirk.
Not to mention that each student participated in a strictly defined number of tests, which was four.
Except…
‘Why the hell is he pretending I’m not here?’ Ryota thought with slight confusion as Aizawa named another group of participants and sent them to the course.
It was suspicious.
Every student had already participated in at least a couple of tests.
Except Ryota.
It seemed like everyone had completely forgotten about him.
At least the students had.
From the moment the comedy started in the classroom to the moment of the Quirk test, the teenagers’ attention constantly bounced from one important thing to another.
It was quite difficult for them to notice the lone guy observing from the side.
With some exceptions.
Ryota once again caught the arrogant, insolent gaze of Katsuki Bakugo.
He was clearly not straining himself too hard on these competitions.
So he often looked around to make sure he was better than anyone else in the class.
That Ryota would go unnoticed was inevitable.
It was equally inevitable that the most explosive guy in 1-A would recognize our hero.
Bakugo was too stung by the fact of his third-place score on the entrance exam.
But soon, the guy was distracted from his self-admiration by a couple of his classmates’ results.
If the infinity sign on the measuring device for Uraraka’s ball throw didn’t bother him much, then Midoriya’s much more modest result, which still exceeded Katsuki’s own, was a different story.
An explosion was inevitable.
But Aizawa once again proved his competence and, with the help of his Erasure Quirk, extinguished the conflict without any problems.
“Well then… You’ve all shown yourselves quite well,” the hero said in a bored tone.
He showed particular approval toward Midoriya, who was now standing with a broken finger, manfully ENDURING.
“However, we have one more untested student. Ryota Arai. Please step into the circle.” He waved his hand toward the softball throw area.
Ryota lazily stepped out from behind the gathered students, drawing several slightly surprised and confused looks.
There was also a couple that stood out from the general crowd.
Ochako Uraraka was clearly stunned, but gradually, joy and something like delight appeared on her face.
Midoriya Izuku, shocked, even forgot about the pain in his broken finger.
After a couple dozen different emotions flashed across his face, he became intensely determined (endurance mode) and set himself the goal of thanking his savior.
Unfortunately, Ryota’s social skills were clearly too poor to interpret anything from the expressions of strangers’ faces.
But he could still theorize based on some details of their biographies he remembered from the canon.
Taking the ball from Aizawa and stepping into the circle, Ryota thought for a few moments.
‘I wonder what all this is about?
What’s the point of singling me out from the general flow?
There’s clearly some unpleasant multi-step plan here. The source of this chapter is g.com.
It’s unpleasant, at least, because I’m not the one organizing it.
It’s being done to me.’
By an act of will, he pushed the conspiracy theories cramming his skull aside and focused on the task.
Throwing the ball.
The guy strongly suspected that right at this moment, Aizawa was boring a hole in his back with his gaze, trying to turn off his ability.
At least, if he were someone influential and had such an unpredictable, uncontrollable figure as Ryota, he would try to test all possible degrees of influence.
This was one of the reasons Ryota was 99% sure he would be placed in Class 1-A, not 1-B.
‘Okay, enough.’ He shook his head again, focusing on the ball in his hand.
‘Maybe Aizawa is just offended by my applause and decided to punish me this way?
The more important question is, what interesting thing can I do with this ball right now?’
Just applying the maximum force vector wasn’t an option.
The consequences were unpredictable, and someone could get hurt.
An idea suddenly came to him: if he calculated the density of the ball, based on his knowledge of the density of the air, he could calculate the maximum resistance and friction the projectile could withstand.
From there, he could calculate the maximum possible speed.
Then another idea came.
A long time ago, when he was still Samuel in his past world, he read a book.
It was about two cities built by different people.
One was a city of happiness, built according to all possible norms, inhabited only by carefully selected people.
An ideal utopia, without the “anti” prefix.
Where every person and every detail worked to make everyone happy.
But there was a second city.
Built by a not-so-pleasant man.
In that city, he built the most advanced factories for that world, producing the most modern weapons.
The city’s walls were smelted from all sorts of iron.
All forms of art and entertainment were forbidden.
In the book, there was a scene where the ruler of this city fired a giant cannon at the city of happiness.
The cannon was calculated so that the projectile would travel halfway across the world and fall on its target.
However, due to a random confluence of factors, the cannonball didn’t land on the city.
Instead, due to the right angle and applied force, it entered orbit.
Ryota didn’t remember the book’s title or its author.
But that scene had somehow been preserved in the depths of his memory.
Now it surfaced, and the inspired guy set about recreating it.
The world around him froze and lost its colors.
Ryota entered his Personal Reality.
‘The ball’s density is the easiest.
Divide mass by volume.’ His abilities, besides his calculation speed, had significantly affected some of his senses.
For example, it was no problem for him to determine the radius of the ball in his hand to within thousandths of a millimeter by sight.
Same with the mass.
‘Next is more fun.
The density of air under normal conditions is 1.2754 kg per cubic meter.
In Japan, due to its proximity to the ocean, this number needs to be adjusted.
Also, it should be noted that density decreases with altitude, and with it, the coefficient of kinematic viscosity.
Current altitude above sea level, angle of inclination, required force application.
Adjust calculations based on possible random interference caused by unpredictable weather in the upper atmosphere.
Adjust calculations based on the higher density of the ozone layer and the decreasing influence of gravity.’
The completed equation compressed to a point.
Then, with a clear conscience, Ryota left his Personal Reality and looked at the ball in his hand with slight doubt.
‘The probability that the material won’t hold up is over forty percent.
Well, it’s still worth a try.’
While Ryota was running through all the calculations and reflections in his head, no time passed in the world around him.
Numerous gazes were still fixed on him.
When he carelessly moved his arm to the side, as if trying to lob the ball gently, everyone was surprised.
When his hand moved forward smoothly, as if the ball released from his fingers wouldn’t fly even a couple of meters, they were puzzled.
When the projectile, no longer held by his slender fingers, broke the sound barrier and shot like a comet toward the blue sky, everyone’s mouths dropped open in shock.
The device held in Aizawa’s frozen hand continued to supply surprisingly accurate information.
1,000 kilometers.
2,000.
3,000.
The students stared mesmerized as the number on the display kept growing.
Ryota patiently counted the seconds.
Soon, he would raise his head to the sky and, using his vector perception to its maximum, try to detect the ball flying high, high above.
If he was lucky, it would become a new satellite of the planet.
At least for a while.