The locker room smelled like new fabric and nervous detergent. Racks rolled along rails with a hiss, presenting our costumes with the pomp of a magic trick. Class 1-A's chatter ricocheted off tile: a dozen different futures zipped into clothes.
Mine hung quiet at the end of the rack—charcoal cloth trimmed with a thread of deep green that only caught the light if it wanted to. UA's Support Course had taken my sketch and made it something you could trust with your back. The robe was light, fire-retardant, and lined inside with flat pouches and elastic sleeves stitched in rows along the ribs, chest, forearms, and thighs. The hem carried a hidden weight so my own smokes wouldn't balloon it around my knees. A cowl hood with a matte lining sat back on my shoulders; a half-mask sealed over nose and mouth with a fine particulate filter. The gloves were fingerless, all tactile sense and no slippage. Soft-sole boots with quiet tread. The satchel rode cross-body like a bandolier, registered and approved, thirty slot-answers in total between bag and robe: twenty in the satchel, ten quick-pulls under the cloth itself.
"Whoa," Kaminari said, pausing mid-pose at his reflection. "Wizard drip."
"Functional," Iida corrected, adjusting his engine-kneed armor like a man practicing penmanship. "Highly practical storage and safety features. Very… Support-forward."
"It looks cool," Ochako whispered to me, eyes shining. "And comfy."
"It's stitched with pockets," I said, which for me was the same as comfy. I slid three Curtain scrolls into the forearm sleeves, one Burst into the inner chest, two Aegis at the ribs where a hand could find them with a thought. Bind and Gale slipped into thigh sleeves where my stride wouldn't jar them free. The satchel swallowed the rest in a tidy litany of clicks. I felt calm. Like walking around with a well-organized argument.
The wall screen flicked on. "WELCOME, YOUNG HEROES!" boomed All Might from an internal feed. Even through the speaker, his voice seemed to punch the room into attention. "Today we begin your indoor battle trial!"
A graphic rotated on screen: floor plans, a stylized bomb idle in a room, routes like veins. "Villain team guards the device. Hero team infiltrates and either captures the villains or tags the device within the time limit. We'll be watching from the control room. NO, YOU MAY NOT DESTROY THE BUILDING."
Aizawa stood in the corner with a thermos and the posture of a man forced to share a room with a karaoke machine. He spoke without looking up. "Draw lots."
Plastic balls rattled in a box. We pulled.
"MIDORIYA & POTTER—HEROES." All Might's jaw did a good try at a grin that understood stakes. "BAKUGO & IIDA—VILLAINS."
Bakugo's laugh was a spark you could cut yourself on. "Perfect."
Iida straightened like someone had poured a backbone into him. "Understood. I shall fulfill my villainous duties with… maximum diligence!"
"Please don't enjoy it so much," Jiro muttered.
Midoriya drifted toward me like a comet too polite to crash. "H-Harry," he said, cheeks flushed with a cocktail of dread and eagerness, "we only have a minute—plan?"
"No duels for me," I said. "You take Bakugo and keep him busy. Close quarters is your language. I'll handle the objective. Smoke everywhere. If I blind the corridors, he can't blast you from range."
He nodded, eyes flaring up with the particular fire that starts inside a notebook. "I can draw him into tight angles. Railings. Doors."
"I'll buff you." I tapped my chest. "Feather—light legs, better acceleration."
"Won't that—" He glanced at my robe. "You can cast on me?"
"Buffs are easier than crowds. Keep your center low when you redirect. If you feel floaty, don't fight it. Guide it."
"Right. Right." He swallowed. "What about Iida?"
"Textbook guard. Efficient lines. I smoke the hall, pull a few cheap tricks to buy seconds, then blind him for two more and tag the bomb." I flicked a Curtain scroll from my forearm sleeve and felt the paper's hum through my fingers. "I'll call 'Shield' if I throw a barrier in front of you. 'Smoke' if I'm about to ghost the room. 'Thirty' if I need that much time."
Midoriya's face did the thing where it looked frightened and pleased at once. "We're nerds," he said, almost apologetic.
"It helps," I said.
He grinned like that had been permission he didn't know he wanted.
We bumped fists. The PA crackled: "HERO TEAM, TO THE START!"
The building swallowed us in concrete and silence. We stopped at a stairwell door. Midoriya flexed his hands, rolling his shoulders with a boxer's ritual. I reached out and pressed my fingers lightly against his forearm.
"Feather," I whispered, and let the buff slip over him like a second pair of lungs. It took with an eager sob—his body was a good student. "Test it."
He bounced on the balls of his feet. "Light," he said, surprised. "Not… weak. Just—less."
"It's a suggestion," I said. "Don't let it become a command."
He nodded. His eyes cut away to the stairs with decision. "I'll make noise. Pull him."
"I'll make smoke," I said, and twisted the door handle.
We moved.
Midoriya took the main stairwell with the optimism of a man about to argue with gravity. I slid through a service corridor where the building kept its secrets: maintenance doors closed but not locked; a fire extinguisher clipped to a wall with the patience of a trap waiting to be sprung; a maintenance plan in a glass case that might as well have read "Harry's lunch."
The blast came on the next landing like a hello. Bakugo's laugh, the raw bark of combustion, the metallic shiver of the stairwell eating heat. I was half a flight up when the boom shoved through the concrete and clawed at my chest.
"Shield!" I barked into the comm. "Aegis!"
The scroll slapped into my hand from the satchel as neatly as any answer. I snapped it open; the barrier unfolded in front of Midoriya like a curved airlock door. The explosion hit the shield; the impact hummed through my bones and jellied my elbows. Dust seethed.
"Go!" I snapped. "Split!"
"On it!" Midoriya's shape blurred low under the shield's edge, then kicked into the smoke like he'd always trained with fog, boots whispering against steps. Bakugo snarled and took the bait with such immediate fury it was almost a relief; the boy didn't do subtle.
I flicked a Curtain scroll loose from my sleeve and popped it. Smoke unrolled thick and sudden—cool, sticky, obedient. It poured into the landing and then away down both hallways like water poured over a map. I slid into it and disappeared.
"Villains love lines," I whispered to myself, half habit, half prayer. "I love corners."
On level three, I smudged junctions with another Curtain and set a little nudge of Gale at each branch—small puffs into a hallway, and then I stood still and felt how the air shoved back. Micro eddies curled off walls; open space breathed different from clutter; a closed door stifled the ping into a dull hiccup. It wasn't sound exactly. It wasn't math exactly. It was… feeling the building exhale.
If I can read this consistently, I thought, hands already wanting the Tome, I can map it. A scroll that eats these pings and spits them onto paper… or an artifact that updates itself. Map-Weave. Worth a field trial in the dorms later. Not today. Today—
A step. Lighter than Bakugo's stomps, too precise to be random. I pressed against the wall. A silhouette slid in the smoke at the end of the corridor, visor catching a smear of emergency light.
Iida's engines hummed. He scanned the hallway with economy and discipline, arm angled to intercept the shortest line to the objective room beyond. Even his breathing sounded punctual.
I lifted a hand and nudged a hanging EXIT sign with Lift. It swayed a clean arc into his sightline.
He burst forward, cutting the angle perfectly, and arrived where I'd want to be if I were a direct problem. He was… wonderful. Annoyingly so. I smiled behind the mask without meaning to.
"Potter," he called, because even villains could be polite in rehearsal. "Come out and face justice like a—like a—villain would." He sounded offended at the improvisation.
"No," I said, from somewhere the smoke lent me. "Respectfully."
He darted forward. The engines snapped; the floor vibrated in little honest notes. I slid a trash bin into his path with a Gale puff; he vaulted it clean, knees tucking and uncoiling with form that would make a gym teacher cry with joy. He landed with his weight already set to pivot.
"Very well!" he called. "Then I shall—"
I popped a Curtain at the corner. Smoke wrote a wall between us.
"—find you," Iida finished, and he did, using the way the air moved around his own body to feel my wake. Smart.
"Thirty seconds," Midoriya's breath whispered over the comm, chopped by effort. "Buy me thirty."
His battle with Bakugo disappeared and reappeared in jagged sounds: a clap of pressure where an explosion met a wall; the grunt of a deflection; the shudder of a door frame absorbing a boy's temper. I wanted to look. I didn't. Trust your plan or don't make one.
I reached for the fire extinguisher with Lift and tugged. The clip resisted with the quiet moralizing of safety standards; then it popped. The canister floated a few centimeters, pin glinting like a thought needing to be removed. I touched it with a nudge and it came free.
The foam hissed with theatrical enthusiasm. I rolled my wrist and spread a low sheet across the floor between Iida and the bomb room's door. The surface went from honest traction to a lie. Iida's next engine burst skidded a hair; he corrected with admirable speed, but knowing you can slip is often as good as making you.
"Very vexing!" he declared, sounding delighted to be vexed.
"Thank you," I said, and meant it. Compliments from fast people count double.
I moved as he adjusted, keeping myself a meter off where he thought I'd be. Macro-hold, micro-nudge, I reminded my hands; the body learns fast if you make it. I held a broad, low Lift across a few palm-sized bits of corridor clutter—a bolt, a washer, a water bottle cap—and gave each a tiny Gale tap at intervals to pebble his path with annoyances that forced micro-corrections. Seconds, nothing more. Enough to put his foot down where the foam's lie began.
He stuttered, recovered smoothly, and pushed for the door with admirable refusal to be tricked twice. A man could learn from him. I certainly did.
I killed the local Curtain with a sharp inhale—the smoke thinned to nothing in the doorway. I didn't want the flash to catch me. He saw me clear for the first time: mask, robe, hand on a Burst tucked under cloth. His visor flared reflections of his engines.
"Apologies," I said, and threw the Burst at my own feet.
Light, white and rude. Sound, a sheet torn near the soul. Even with eyes averted and lids squeezed shut, the world pulsed into red for a stuttering beat. Iida's visor cut a fraction, but the hammer got through. He reeled.
"Sorry," I added, because it made it easier to move.
Gale shoved him a half-step, not because I thought it would topple him—it wouldn't—but because it would change the rhythm of his correction. As he adjusted, I sent a Bind micro-tap toward his ankle servo, something just shy of a suggestion. It kissed metal with a squeak no one heard over the echo; his foot stuck for two seconds.
Two seconds is ten lifetimes if you've already told your body what to do with them.
I slid past his guard and hit the casing of the prop bomb palm-flat.
"Objective!" I shouted, to the room, the comm, the building.
A beat of silence—the kind of quiet where a coin hangs in the air—and then the PA announced in All Might's cheerful thunder: "HERO TEAM WINS!"
The relief arrived so fast it felt like a stumble.
Iida blinked, visor clearing, and then straightened. He took in my posture, the foam, the extinguished smoke lingering like a rumor. He bowed, low and formal. "Excellent sequencing," he said, sincere as a pledge. "The foam sheet combined with sensory denial and a quick restraint…I misjudged your axis of approach."
"Thank you," I said, bowing back, because I liked the ritual of respect that made a win feel less like gloating and more like a lesson traded. "You're very hard to trick twice."
"I endeavor to be," he said, proud.
Midoriya and Bakugo crashed into view through a door that had given up on being a door. Bakugo had scorched the corridor into a topographical map of his temper; Midoriya's costume had gained a layer of dust and triumphant confusion. They froze at the sight of us. Bakugo's lip curled.
"You—" he snarled at Midoriya, about to invent a new tense of insult.
"We won," Midoriya said, breathless but steady. Not gloating. Not apologizing. Just naming a thing.
Bakugo's eyes went feral. "You got lucky, DEKU!"
"Luck is part of the field," I said mildly, and got a death stare for my trouble. Aizawa's voice flicked over the comm at just the right moment to keep things from needing Recovery Girl again.
"All teams return to control," he said. "And if you punched holes in the walls, you're helping fix them."
Midoriya looked at me as the anger washed past. "Your Feather—it made stepping in and out easier," he said, half awe, half analysis. "I could change angles without planting as hard. He didn't expect—"
"Good," I said. "And you bought me the thirty seconds I asked for."
He grinned, ridiculous and pure, and for a second I forgot I was wearing a mask. We bumped fists over Iida's sigh of "sportsmanship."
The control room kept its own weather: the hum of monitors, the feeling of being watched by judgment that wanted you to do well. All Might leaned into a microphone with his natural inability to be anything but loud. "THAT WAS A BEAUTIFUL EXAMPLE OF COMPLEMENTARY QUIRKS!"
"It was smoke," Mineta snickered, then shut up because his partner elbowed him in the liver.
Aizawa scrolled through notes with all the excitement of a man reviewing taxes. "Potter used area denial to prevent long-range engagement, avoided dueling a speedster, and applied an objective-first strategy. Latency manageable when he keeps chains short."
I heard the word latency like someone had highlighted it in my head, again.
"Ochako!" All Might continued, because he could not physically help himself. "Note how Potter's Curtain enabled movement—turning a two-on-two into…well, one-on-one plus a stealth op!"
She flashed me a thumbs-up so enthusiastic her glove squeaked.
Bakugo fumed in a corner, smoke curling from his palms as if the air had offended him by allowing other people to breathe it. Midoriya stood near the back, shoulders squared, trying to look like he belonged, succeeding by accident and by force of will.
When the commentary finished, Aizawa clicked the tablet off like the device had personally disappointed him. "Feedback," he said. He pointed a finger at Midoriya first. "You won without breaking yourself. Make that the rule."
Midoriya nodded so hard I worried about his neck.
Aizawa turned the finger to me. "You didn't try to outpunch speed. Good. Next time—fewer steps, faster execution. If the chain is four pieces, make it three. If it's three, make it two. And don't smoke your allies."
"I have a filter," I said, pulling the half-mask down a touch with an apologetic shrug.
"I meant the rest of them," he said, deadpan. "Use your mouth. Call it."
"I did," Iida volunteered primly. "He did."
"Then keep doing it," Aizawa said. He zipped his sleeping bag up without getting into it. "Next teams."
We filtered into the hall, the adrenaline cooling into a hum that would keep you awake if you let it. I peeled the half-mask down and took a long breath that tasted like work well spent.
"Your timing saved it," Midoriya said quietly as footsteps thudded past. "Those two seconds on Iida."
"And your thirty saved me from Bakugo," I said. "I prefer not being exploded."
He grinned, suddenly shy. "You're…you're good at being clever."
"I'm trying to be good at being fast," I said. "But clever will do until then."
We bumped fists again, because apparently that was a thing now, and began the delicate dance of getting out of each other's way while walking in the same direction.
After debrief, I found a quiet corner of the locker room and emptied the spent scroll casings into a tin—their paper soft and light as decisions you'd keep making. The robe's pouches sagged and settled, pleased with their work. I sat on the bench and opened the Tome, its paper waiting the way good friends wait.
Battle Trial — Notes
Win path: objective > duel (works). Keep it.
Chains: Curtain → Burst → Gale/Bind → Tag — trim steps. Practice two-link finishes.
Latency: improving under pressure when models are simple; keep calls short.
Feather (ally): useful for angle change; draft buff protocol ("feather: legs; call out floaty; adjust stance").
Curtain choreography: layer smokes to create safe corridors; call it. Filter helps me—need hand signals for team.
Environment: fire extinguisher = low-traction sheet. Standard trick now. Practice recovery on foam.
Sonar idea: micro-Gale pings; sense eddies/pressure. Could feed into Map-Weave v0. Try in dorm hall at night; log drift/accuracy; maybe pair with pencil-tracing scroll that updates in real time.
I underlined Map-Weave v0 three times. The thought made a stubborn part of my brain sit up and wag its tail.
I wrote one more line, because Aizawa's voice had a way of turning into homework even when you didn't want it to:
Next goal: convert three-step chains into two. Latency ↓.
I closed the Tome. The robe rustled as if it approved. In the mirror, the wizard boy looked back—mask down around his neck, hair smashed into obedience, scars quiet, eyes bright with the worst kind of optimism: informed.
On the way out, Bakugo shouldered past me hard enough to suggest we share bones. I stepped aside without giving him the friction he wanted. He snarled something that turned into a vowel halfway through because his mouth ran faster than his plans. Midoriya stood at the end of the hall like a fact.
"I'm not done with you," Bakugo spat, pointing at both of us without admitting he'd done so. "Either of you."
"Okay," Midoriya said, with the calm of a person who had survived the truth and wasn't eager to argue with it.
Bakugo stormed away, leaving scorchy footprints in the air. I exhaled. The building exhaled with me.
We filed back toward class, costumes creaking, bruises composing themselves into stories. My fingers brushed the edge of a Curtain scroll in my sleeve and found it there, ready. I left it in place.
Make things better, I thought. Fewer steps. Faster choices. Map the rooms you have to enter.
We had won without breaking. It felt like a habit worth learning.