….
[Next Day]
At 6:00 AM, the U.A. High School parking lot was a portrait of teenage misery.
The morning air was still thick with the damp, heavy humidity of early sumr, but that wasn't what had Class 1-A dragging their feet.
It was the hour.
"This is a human rights violation." Kaminari groaned, his forehead resting against the cool tal side of the idling bus. "Who schedules a departure for six in the morning? The sun barely just woke up."
"People who understand the logistical necessity of arriving at a remote destination before nightfall." Iida responded.
He was already doing deep lunges beside the luggage compartnt, looking infuriatingly awake. "Proper preparation and an early departure are the bedrock of any successful expedition! I suggest you stretch, Kaminari-kun!"
"Iida, please." Jiro rubbed her temples. "Have rcy. If you chop your arms one more ti, I am going to tie them together with my jacks."
Dabi leaned against the open doors of the bus, a cup of black coffee in one hand, watching the chaos.
A few yards away, Aizawa was addressing Class 1-B and their horoom teacher, Vlad King. The plan officially communicated to the staff and students was simple: absolute secrecy.
Due to the recent string of catastrophic events; the USJ breach, the mall incident, the targeted attack on Dabi's apartnt; Principal Nezu had changed the training camp location at the eleventh hour.
The new coordinates were only to a handful of senior faculty and the on-site supervisors.
As far as U.A. was concerned, this was a brilliant, foolproof counterasure to ensure the students' safety.
You couldn't attack a target if you didn't know where it was.
Dabi took a slow sip of his coffee, his turquoise eyes sliding over the crowd until they landed on Yuga Aoyama, whose usual sparkling deanor replaced by a pale, rigid nervousness.
The spy kid, Dabi thought, his expression remaining perfectly flat.
Aoyama had probably received his orders from All For One, and the kid was going to transmit their location the mont the buses stopped and the GPS coordinates beca clear.
Obviously, Dabi could have stopped it, and obviously he didn't.
"Class 1-A, left bus. Class 1-B, right bus." Aizawa's exhausted voice finally cut through the morning chatter. "Load your gear, find your seats, and shut up. We're stopping only once for a bathroom break. Don't complain between stops unless you are actively bleeding to death."
"Sensei, where exactly are we going?" Kaminari asked, hoisting his duffel bag.
"You will find out when we arrive."
"Can you at least give us a hint? Mountains? Beach? A hyper-baric torture chamber?"
"Get on the bus, Kaminari."
….
For the first ten minutes of the highway journey, the students made a valiant attempt to respect Aizawa's demand for silence.
Then, natural teenage chaos reasserted itself.
Kirishima and Sero started a loud debate about hero rankings, Ashido was leaning over the seats trying to convince Tsuyu to rate the boys' sumr casual outfits, and Bakugo was threatening to blow up anyone who bumped his seat.
"Bathroom break." Aizawa announced. "Ten minutes. Do not wander off."
The students filed out to stretch their legs. Dabi stood by the doors, doing a quick, instinctive headcount. Everyone was present.
"Hey, Dabi-sensei?" Kaminari pointed toward the empty parking lot. "Where's Class 1-B's bus? Shouldn't they be stopping here too?"
"They took a different route." Dabi replied smoothly, leaning against the vehicle. "You'll et up at the destination."
Yaoyorozu's brow furrowed. "Is the faculty intentionally splitting our forces to make tracking our movents more difficult for any potential surveillance?"
"Ten minutes ans ten minutes, Yaoyorozu." Dabi said, completely ignoring her correct deduction. "Get back on the bus before Aizawa wakes up cranky."
After four more hours of journey, the scenery outside the windows shifted dramatically.
The concrete highways gave way to dense, towering pine forests, the road winding steeply upward into the isolated mountains.
Finally, the bus pulled off into a wide, dirt-paved scenic overlook. It featured a wooden safety railing and a staggering, plunging view of a massive, heavily forested valley below.
"Alright, everyone out." Aizawa grunted, unzipping his yellow sleeping bag.
The students piled out, groaning and stretching their stiff muscles.
"Man, finally." Sero sighed, leaning over the railing to look at the vast expanse of trees below. "I thought we were going to be on that bus forever. Where is the lodge, anyway?"
"You are here~" a cheerful, energetic female voice rang out.
The students jumped, spinning around to see a sleek black car parked near the tree line.
Three figures stepped out; two won wearing elaborate, brightly colored cat-thed hero costus, and a small, fiercely scowling boy standing behind them.
"The Wild, Wild Pussycats!" the woman in red announced, striking a dramatic, synchronized pose with her partner. "Professional Hero Team, reporting for duty!"
"I am Mandalay." the red-costud hero continued, winking at the stunned teenagers. "And this is Pixie-Bob! Ragdoll and Tiger are waiting for you at the base. We'll be your supervisors for next week!"
"ow!" Pixie-Bob added, her claws flashing in the sunlight.
Class 1-A stared in utter bewildernt.
"Uh." Kirishima scratched the back of his neck. "That's aweso and all, but... where exactly is the training facility?"
Mandalay smiled, pointing a gloved finger straight down into the sprawling, endless ocean of trees at the bottom of the valley. "See that small building way, way down there at the base of the mountain? That's your lodge."
Kaminari's face lit up. "Oh, sweet! So we just hop back on the bus and drive down there?"
"Nope!" Pixie-Bob's grin turned absolutely, terrifyingly feral. "You're going to get there using your Quirks! It is currently 9:30 AM. You have until 12:30 PM to reach the facility. That's three hours. Those who don't make it before the deadline don't get lunch!"
"Wait, what?" multiple students shouted in unison.
"Welco to the Beast's Forest, kittens!"
Before anyone could make a run for the safety of the bus, Pixie-Bob slamd both of her hands into the dirt. Her [Earth Flow] Quirk activated instantly.
The ground beneath Class 1-A suddenly liquefied and buckled, creating a massive landslide that swept all twenty students off the edge of the overlook.
"WHAT THE HELL–?!" Bakugo's furious scream echoed off the mountainside as they plumted into the canopy below.
They landed in a chaotic, tumbling heap of dirt, groans, and tangled limbs at the edge of the dark forest.
The trees here were impossibly thick, casting long, eerie shadows that blocked out most of the morning sun.
"This is insane!" Jiro groaned, pushing herself off the dirt and rubbing her bruised shoulder. "They literally just threw us off a cliff!"
"Guys! Look!" Hagakure shouted, a floating uniform sleeve pointing into the shadows. "Sothing's moving!"
The ground trembled, and the trees parted, snapping like twigs, as a massive creature erged. It was easily fifteen feet tall, shaped vaguely like a bear, but composed entirely of hardened clay, rocks, and packed earth.
Koji Koda, trembling but determined, stepped forward to activate his Quirk. "Please! Calm down! We don't want to—"
The beast didn't even hesitate, swinging a massive earthen claw directly at his head. Koda yelped, diving backward into the dirt just in ti to avoid being flattened.
"It's not working!" Koda panicked, scrambling away. "It's not a real animal! It's made of dirt!"
"Then we smash it!"
Bakugo didn't hesitate.
He launched himself forward, the palms of his hands igniting.
However, unlike his usual wild, wasteful blast, he compressed the ignition, using a precise, concentrated AP Shot that tore a clean, devastating hole straight through the beast's chest.
"I have got the legs!"
Green lightning crackled violently across Midoriya's body.
Channeling Full Cowling, he darted under the creature's flailing guard.
Simultaneously, thick, tendrils of black energy erupted from his forearm, Blackwhip, lashing out to wrap tightly around the beast's torso, anchoring it in place.
With a ferocious pivot, Midoriya delivered a reinforced kick to its knee joint, shattering the clay structure.
"Finish it!" Todoroki swept his right arm forward, sending a sudden, sweeping wave of glacial ice across the forest floor, freezing the beast's remaining limbs solid to the earth.
"Recipro Burst!" Iida's engines roared as he descended from a mid-air jump, his tal-plated boots crashing into the frozen dirt monster and shattering it into a million harmless pieces of mud.
"Okay, that was pretty cool." Kirishima grinned, hardening his fists. "We've got this!"
"Don't celebrate yet." Yaoyorozu warned, pulling a bo-staff from her forearm as the ground began to rumble from three different directions at once. "There are more coming. A lot more."
Kaminari looked up at the sky, tears pricking his eyes. "Why does this keep happening to us?"
….
While Class 1-A faced their first brutal hurdle at the training camp, a far more dangerous storm was brewing in the shadows.
All For One was not a man accustod to setbacks.
The recent humiliation in the shopping complex, orchestrated entirely by Dabi, was a variable he had no intention of leaving unchecked.
In his grand design, the chess board belonged solely to Tomura Shigaraki and All Might's successor, Izuku Midoriya.
Dabi was an anomaly.
An unmapped variable outside the syllabus, and one that needed to be eliminated before he could disrupt the pieces any further.
By all accounts, All For One was supposed to be in deep hiding, recovering from his wounds.
Instead, he stood deep within an isolated mountain range, utilizing a crude, stolen teleportation quirk.
It lacked the refined elegance of his usual thods, manifesting instead as a foul, bubbling puddle of black, lted tar that slowly reconstituted his form in the woods.
He was here for his most loyal asset.
Gigantomachia.
For years, the colossus had remained isolated in these mountains, a living weapon concealed even from the keen eyes of All Might and Gran Torino during All For One's reign of terror.
Utilizing a subterranean Mole Quirk, the beast had stayed buried beneath the earth, waiting for the day Kurogiri would finally co to locate him and awaken him for the League's grand rise.
But Dabi's interference had accelerated the tiline.
All For One was being forced to play his hidden card early.
Standing before the quiet, rumbling mountain, All For One stared up at the earth.
It was ti to transport his 'masterpiece' to the board, at the exact place, and the exact ti, of his choosing.
.
….
[To be continued…]
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