The classroom buzzed louder than usual that morning. The scrape of chairs, the clatter of pens, the low hum of gossip—all the little noises piled together into something almost cheerful. After the USJ incident, everyone seemed to carry their nerves differently. Some were brighter, talkative, forcing laughs as if nothing had happened. Others stayed quiet, glancing over shoulders, every sudden sound making them tense.
Harry sat at his desk, pretending to sketch aimlessly in his notebook, though what filled the page wasn't doodles but fragments of spell notation—tiny clusters of symbols, numbers, and arrow-like lines weaving into shapes only he understood. He was halfway through revising the energy flow of a barrier model when the classroom door slid open.
Aizawa entered. He was wrapped in bandages from neck to wrist, looking like a mummy dragged unwillingly out of bed, but his eyes were the same—sharp, exhausted, and cutting straight through the noise.
"Settle down." His voice was low but enough. Chairs squeaked, laughter trailed off, and silence rippled across the room.
Aizawa surveyed them a moment, then spoke. "You all did well surviving the USJ attack. Some of you performed better than expected. Others… need more discipline. Regardless, you're alive. That's a start."
A couple of students shifted uncomfortably. Harry felt his shoulders tense, remembering the way his barrier cracked under Nomu's fist, the burn in his scar afterward.
"But don't get comfortable," Aizawa continued. "You don't get downtime here. Two weeks from now is the U.A. Sports Festival. And you will participate."
The silence broke like glass.
"The Sports Festival?" Uraraka's eyes widened. "Even after the attack?"
"Yes," Aizawa said flatly. "Especially after the attack. The school doesn't retreat just because villains made noise. The Festival is tradition. More importantly—it's the single greatest chance you'll ever have to showcase yourselves to the pro hero community."
Bakugo slammed a fist into his desk, standing so abruptly his chair toppled. "Perfect! I'll crush every single one of you and show them I'm the only real choice!"
"Pipe down," Aizawa muttered without looking at him.
Harry listened as the room lit up with chatter. Kaminari leaned toward Jirō, grinning. "Guess that means we're officially famous, huh?"
Mineta nearly drooled on his notebook. "Famous! Do you know what this means? Girls! Autographs! Girls!"
Uraraka pressed her palms together nervously. "If I do well, maybe… maybe I can actually start helping my parents with money."
Midoriya looked like he was trying not to hyperventilate. He scribbled in his own notebook so quickly the pages crinkled.
Harry closed his eyes for a moment. The Sports Festival. An arena full of spectators. Pro heroes judging every movement. Reporters. Cameras. And him—standing there with nothing but a satchel of clumsy scrolls. He pictured trying to unfurl one in the middle of a sprint, fumbling with parchment while Bakugo hurled explosions, or Todoroki froze half the stadium. The thought made his stomach twist.
He couldn't rely on scrolls anymore. They were too slow, too bulky, too obvious. If he wanted to survive in that spotlight, he needed something sharper, faster. Something different.
Harry's orphanage room smelled faintly of ink and burnt paper by the time evening fell. He sat hunched over his desk, a single lamp spilling yellow light across the mess. Scroll tubes lay cracked open, the remnants of past experiments. Scraps of paper curled at the edges, blackened from failed inscriptions. His fingers were smudged with red ink mixed faintly with his own blood—always the stabilizer for his models.
"Too big," he muttered, pushing aside another scroll. "Too fragile."
He stared at a blank card stock square. Small, rigid, durable. If he could condense his notation enough, maybe—just maybe—it could hold a full model without unraveling.
The first attempt fizzled the moment he finished inscribing the last rune. The card smoked, edges curling. Harry swore under his breath.
The second one cracked right down the middle.
The third sparked weakly, releasing a flash so pathetic it barely lit his desk before burning out.
"Come on," Harry groaned, rubbing his eyes. He grabbed another card, dipped his pen into the vial of ink, and tried again. He compressed the loops, tightened the flow lines, cut unnecessary markers.
By the sixth attempt, something felt different. The ink shimmered faintly, settling into grooves without bleeding out. The model sat balanced, complete. Harry held the card between his fingers, heart thudding.
"Alright… let's see."
He pressed magic into it. The card glowed, brightening—then exploded in a sharp white flash, filling the room with a crack like a camera bulb shattering. Harry staggered back, blinking furiously, but a grin split across his face.
"It worked," he whispered hoarsely. "It actually worked."
When his eyes cleared, he stared down at the card. Burnt around the edges, drained of power, but intact. The first true card.
Yet the excitement dimmed quickly. He realized he still had to press it to activate. It wasn't any faster than a scroll in real combat. Just smaller.
He leaned back in his chair, card dangling between two fingers. "Better. But not enough. Not yet."
The next day at lunch, Harry sat with Midoriya and Iida. His food tray sat mostly untouched as he scribbled on a napkin, refining compression notations.
"Harry," Midoriya said suddenly, leaning over. "Are those… quirk notes again?"
Harry froze for a fraction before sighing. "Something like that. I'm… trying to make things quicker. More compact."
"Compact?" Iida adjusted his glasses. "Efficiency is vital, especially in combat situations. However, execution is equally important. If you plan on throwing those—" He gestured at Harry's napkin diagrams. "—you'll need to practice your aim and form."
Midoriya nodded eagerly. "He's right! Even if you make them smaller, if they wobble mid-air or snap on impact, they won't work. It's like throwing support gear—heroes practice that too."
Harry blinked at them, surprised by how straightforward they were about it. He'd been bracing for teasing, but instead, they offered… advice. He managed a small smile.
"Guess I'll need to start training my throw, then."
"Exactly," Iida said firmly.
From across the table, Kaminari smirked. "What are you, a card magician now? Gonna pull rabbits out of hats next?"
Mineta snorted, nearly choking on his juice. "Yeah, as long as they're girl rabbits—"
Harry ignored them, though the corner of his mouth twitched. Let them joke. He knew what he was building.
That night, he laid three completed cards side by side on his desk: Flashbang, Veil, and Gale. Each about the size of his palm, each charged and ready.
He flicked one into the air experimentally, caught it again. Awkward. Clumsy. If he wanted these to be weapons, he'd need to practice every throw until it was muscle memory.
He set the cards down, opened his notebook, and scrawled a new heading:
"Next Step: Remote Trigger Model."
He tapped the pen against his lip, gaze distant. Smaller was progress, but speed meant nothing if he still had to touch the cards to trigger them. He needed a way to activate them at a distance. A link.
His eyes flicked to the window, where the U.A. campus glowed faintly against the night sky. Two weeks. That was all the time he had.
Harry picked up one of the crude cards, rolled it between his fingers, and whispered, "If I can't make this work, I'll be nothing but a joke out there."
The card caught the lamplight for a moment, glimmering faintly, before he set it back down among the scattered ink stains and half-finished diagrams.
The Festival loomed, closer every second.