Chapter Text
Each of the students stared with wide, intimidated eyes at the structures in front of them. There were five different buildings, each with thick smoke pouring from the windows. They then turned to look at their teacher Aizawa, who looked as unfazed as usual despite the imminent danger before them. All Might, who was standing beside him, seemed to share the concerned look of the students as Aizawa began the mission debriefing.
“So.” he began, pausing to ensure everyone was watching him, “A few days prior to this lesson, you were all trained in proper fire rescue procedures. Well, those practices were all designed for today’s event—which I have thoroughly forewarned you of. The task for today’s hero lesson, is to rescue a lifelike dummy from the interior of an actual burning building.”
Everyone’s eyes widened, including All Might’s—who didn’t seem to have received the forewarning at all.
“I am aware that you children are not firefighters. Therefore, the simulation will be controlled by a skilled group of pyrotechnics—aka, the support course. All students will also be equipped with a minimalized set of firefighter gear for the sake of your personal safety. Granted, in an actual emergency, you might not have any equipment at all, so it is important you learn how to deal with that scenario separately. But as for today, we will be prioritizing your health. Am I clear?”
Class 1-A nodded nervously back at him.
“Well then.” he pointed to the buildings, “There are five buildings, meaning you will enter as rescue parties of 4. The only real rules to this exercise, other than rescuing the civilian, are not to destroy the building, or enter the topmost floor. The top floor is a safe zone set aside as a maintenance floor. It is a locked room where the support students can safely work on the pyrotechnics live during the exercise, and has a separate escape route in case anything goes wrong. On the other hand, we teachers will be evaluating you using the interior camera footage of the buildings.”
Aizawa relaxed finally, lowering his arm into his pocket. “Any questions?”
Kaminari raised his hand.
“Yes?”
“Is there a chance we could die in there?”
Aizawa’s expression soured, “Any other questions?”
“It’s a legitimate question!” Kaminari defended, “You’re sending us into an actual fire simulation—what if one of us gets crushed under burning floor boards or something?”
“Unless you do something incredibly foolish, your lives will not be in actual jeopardy.” Aizawa huffed, “This is a fairly new part of the curriculum the principal is having us test, but I’ve been told that he and Power Loader have worked hard to ensure this exercise will not end catastrophically.”
“O-okay…”
“Good. Anyone else?”
Aizawa took one last sweep of the class before nodding contently to himself. For once, his debriefing seemed thorough enough to even satisfy Iida, so there was no point in explaining any further. He lifted up the roll slip at his side, and began to peer down the list of names to assign everyone into groups.
“In that case, I will call out the group assignments,” he mumbled.
For the most part, Aizawa assigned people by calling out their names at random. The only students he cared to intentionally not put together, were Midoriya and Bakugo, and Yaoyorozu and Mineta (for obvious reasons). When it was Iida’s turn, he looked up at Aizawa expectantly, patiently awaiting his assignment.
“Iida Tenya, Sero Hanta, Ashido Mina, and Tokoyami Fumikage.”
The moment he heard their names, Iida’s eyes searched the group until they eventually landed on the faces of his respective partners. He saw them waving him over in the back, and quickly rushed over to join them until all of the remaining group assignments were given out.
“Alright, now that that’s arranged,” Aizawa grunted, “You are each allotted the next 40 minutes to complete the task. Please put on your fire gear and communication earpieces, and commence your training.”
The building in front of Iida was decently sized—perhaps seven stories tall, in total. With the four of them though, Iida was certain they would be able to pass the exercise with minimal problems, so long as the building remained mostly intact.
“Are you all ready?” Iida asked, turning to look at his teammates a second time, “We should be free to start now.”
Ashido, Sero, and Tokoyami all nodded to him, slightly jostling the modified breathing apparatuses on their faces as they did so.
“I am, I think!” Ashido was the first to say, “A dummy is a lot less stressful than rescuing a real person, so this should be a cinch!”
“Don’t jinx it, Mina!” Sero quickly chided, “You always say things like that, and then something immediately goes wrong!” he then turned back to Iida with a nervous cringe on his face, “I think I’m ready too though. The fire training we did before kinda helped to prepare us, so we kind of know what to expect.”
Tokoyami agreed to that, “My thoughts exactly. Though we should remain cautious.”
“In that case then,” Iida gripped his fists tensely before sharply turning towards the front door of the building, “Let’s go!”
The moment the door was opened, a blast of hot air greeted them from within. From what Iida could immediately see, the first floor resembled somewhat of a lobby—complete with overturned tables and old chairs, likely lifted from a clearance sale for old furniture. There wasn’t any fire on the first floor, however, meaning the smokiness in the room must’ve drifted down from upstairs.
“Woah! This place is sure muggy—it’s gonna be hard to see once we get upstairs,” Ashido commented.
“Try your best to wipe any soot from your masks,” Iida replied, already beginning to approach the first flight of stairs, “The gloves we equipped are fireproof, so don’t be afraid even if the mask feels a bit warm. If we can’t see, we won’t be able to find the civilian!”
They all nodded, and quickly fell into step behind Iida as he began to scale the steps. Picking up the pace as the second floor came into view, Iida rushed onto the landing and peered around at his surroundings before the others behind him. Two hallways branched off on the right and left sides, much like a hotel floor, and were accompanied by rows of identical doors, numbering from 100 and beyond.
Iida gritted his teeth. There were a lot of rooms that would need checking.
“Ah, #@*%! Look at all of those…” Sero cringed the moment he made it to the top stair.
“There’s no way we can check all of them in time!” Ashido added.
Iida spun to face his teammates with apprehension in his eyes. 40 minutes had seemed like a solid amount of time, but if every single floor had this layout, they would undoubtedly have to cut things close.
What’s the most efficient way to handle this then…? Iida wondered.
“Let’s split up.”
Everyone turned to face Tokoyami, who was still a stair lower than the others on the landing.
“Are you sure that’s safe?” Sero asked, “I mean, I know we’ve gotta do this fast, but we need to be able to look out for each other.”
“Hmm…” Ashido hummed for a moment, before suddenly beaming, “How about we split into pairs? That way, one of us can find the others if anything happens!”
“I think I can agree with that,” Iida agreed, nodding firmly, “I recommend then that we should pair up according to whoever is best equipped for breaking down doors.”
“Ooh, smart!”
Everyone looked around at each other curiously for a moment, before Ashido asked again, “But uh… who’s the best at doing that?”
“Well, for starters,” Iida began thoughtfully, “Sero and Tokoyami shouldn’t be paired together, in case the fire shrinks Dark Shadow, and also because, well… Sero, you’d have to break through doors by force alone, honestly.”
Sero sighed deeply, “That’s true, my quirk isn’t all that useful in a place like this…”
“In that case then, Ashido, why don’t you stick with Tokoyami and melt doors for him, while I can kick down doors down for Sero?”
“Oh, sure! I can do that, that’s easy enough!”
Sero still looked a little worried, however, as he glanced back at Iida, “Won’t that be hard on you? Maybe having Tokoyami with you would be better, Iida.”
“I disagree,” at Tokoyami’s remark, they all spun to face him again, and he scaled the last step to meet them at eye level, “Unless you plan on solving all problems with brute force alone, it would be better to balance our intelligences more evenly, wouldn’t it?”
Sero and Ashido gave a similar wince, realizing that Tokoyami was basically suggesting not to pair the two idiots with each other.
“S-says the one who’s 14th in the class,” Ashido grumbled, but the irony of her words didn’t merit much sympathy out of anyone.
“Let’s just go ahead and do it. We’re wasting time at this point!” Sero shouted, settling beside Iida, “Let’s go guys! Hurry!”
After joining Ashido, she and Tokoyami gave a firm nod, “We’ll see you on the third floor! Good luck!”
Without another comment, both groups split off into the left and right directions, busting down doors along the way as the flames upstairs crackled louder.
“Of all the people to be stuck with, we got freaking Hatsume again…”
“She’s with us enough as it is, hogging the development studio every day…”
Amongst the thrilling chaos that was brewing downstairs, three members of the support department currently occupied the seventh floor of the building. Along with Hatsume, who was currently tinkering with something in the back of the room like usual, were her two fellow classmates—the same two who had gone through so much of her nonsense already in past weeks.
Unlike her, both of them were currently facing a pair of large monitors that displayed live footage of the students in the building. At a glance, one could see Iida and Sero traversing the right quadrant of the second floor, Tokoyami and Ashido exploring the left quadrant, and an isolated footage of the practice dummy; which had already been tucked away under some broken ceiling beams on the sixth floor. Meanwhile, sitting on a long, white folding table in front of them, were several suitcase-shaped containers, that featured rows of switches and cables, all connecting to different pyrotechnic wires along the various floors. As Iida’s group closed in on the dummy, they would activate more—though not so many that their lives would be in any danger.
One of the classmates, the one seated on the right with light brown hair and indigo-colored eyes, flicked a switch for the second floor that sparked embers for a controlled hallway fire. It sealed off Iida and Sero’s exit only, meaning they would have to circle back around on the third floor if they wanted to escape later.
“Hatsume, you gonna help us?” the other classmate asked, a student with brown eyes, and pitch-black hair pulled back in a small ponytail, “Like we mentioned before, that Iida kid is in this group. You could have some fun, if you would just come over here and do your part.”
“I’m almost done with this, just keep quiet!” she barked back, not even looking up from what she was messing with.
Both of their lips curled in irritation, but made no further complaints. Hatsume was Hatsume—and no one, not even Power Loader, could typically get her to put down what she was working on until she was completely done. It was annoying, and often resulted in her getting scolded, but the other two didn’t have the energy anymore to force her listen to them.
Instead, they observed the footage in silence, watching with interest as Iida’s group made quick work of the second floor, and hurried up to the third; a cluttered warehouse.
“He’s actually pretty talented,” the brown-haired kid commented, “Iida Tenya. Out of the four of them, he’s the most leader-like. Always calm, and quick to form a plan.”
“Yeah, I was noticing that too. The others are great at following directions and have flashy enough quirks, but if they didn’t have someone like Iida to manage them, they’d be all over the place.”
As the conversation continued to include Iida, Hatsume’s attention gradually shifted to her classmates. Sure, she hadn’t finished what she was working on, but if she was honest, it was just meant to distract herself from doing any real work. She wasn’t particularly attached to it.
She’d always been skittish about following class directions—she despised having to work under someone with such strict expectations. It was only natural she’d dislike proctoring this exercise. Even if she wasn’t grading it or anything major like that, she still had to mindlessly observe while flicking an occasional switch, and that was just far too under-stimulating for her hyperactive attention span.
Yet, for the first time within the last twenty-or-so minutes of setup, Hatsume stood up, and casually peered over her acquaintances shoulders to view the computer screens. The other two didn’t notice her, and continued to talk.
“You know, it’s kind of a wonder how he and Hatsume ever became friends though. I mean look—” the brown-haired kid pointed to Iida as he started chopping the air patronizingly at Sero, “He’s a real stickler for rules, so how do they even get along? I feel like they would drive each other crazy.”
“That’s because you don’t know him properly.”
Shocked to hear her so close to them, both students whirled around in their seats to see Hatsume glaring pointedly in their directions.
“Well, maybe not, but can you blame us for thinking that way?” the black-haired kid defended.
“Yes,” she quipped back, “It’s not fair to judge someone by their appearances, even if you have a point.”
They both looked slightly defeated upon her saying that. Feeling as if they had crossed some sort of unspoken line, they started to turn back to the monitor again, when Hatsume continued talking.
“There’s a lot more to Iida than you might think,” she huffed indignantly, her eyes landing softly on his grainy picture on the screen, “Sure, he’s a real party pooper and a bit of a teacher’s pet, but he’s also my friend. Even when I have some crazy idea I want to test, he always comes in clutch to help me when no one else would. And…”
She shrugged, twisting her mouth off to the side as if she were feeling a bit bashful to admit what came next, “that really shows how great of a person he is. Sure, we’re opposites, but we’re… good for each other, like that.”
Neither of the two boys had anything to really say to that, but they did exchange a sober glance with one another as if understanding something beyond what her words had said. Not a second longer however, the light-haired student turned back to the footage of the dummy and stiffened in his seat. There was something unexpected on the thermal camera.
“Hey—this doesn’t look normal!” he said hurriedly, redirecting the camera to zoom in closer to where the problem was, “This room is way too hot, don’t you guys think? I’m pretty certain we set the temperature a good eight degrees lower, yet it keeps on rising.”
The other classmate leaned in closer to look, and gave an agreeing nod, “Yeah, that’s kind of weird… something must be malfunctioning down there.”
At the word malfunction, Hatsume’s face lit up. This was more her style—getting into the root of problems and repairing things her way. It was the main thing she’d hoped to do when she was assigned to the pyrotechnic team anyway—the reason she had endured all those boring classes on fire safety and proper wiring procedures.
“Need to send someone in to fix it?” she piped up behind them, making both of them turn.
“Yeah, probably,” the student on the right sighed, “We can’t have things getting too hot, or all of these controlled fires will end up out of control. That, and the plastic on the mannequin is starting to melt…”
“Then I will head down there ASAP! Just tell me what to do, and I’ll be off!”
“Sure, just give me a sec…”
The brown-haired student flicked a couple of switches in the off position so that the flames would turn off on the sixth floor, and activated a couple more where Iida’s group were located so they could buy enough time to fix the issue.
“Just wait a little bit for the floor to cool down, and head down there with this oxygen mask.”
He handed her a mask and a pair of fire-resistant gloves, which she slid onto her forehead and hands respectively.
“Perfect! I’ll be about ten minutes, give or take, so just hold those kids off until I’m done, all right?”
“That’s fine. And we’ll stay in touch using the earpieces Maijima-sensei gave us, so make sure to give us an exact play-by-play of what you’re doing down there. This job isn’t exactly an easy one.”
“Fine!”
Once about five minutes had passed and the room was cool enough to reenter, Hatsume approached the back corner of the room where some extra pyrotechnic cables were stored, along with a couple gallons of gasoline, and her toolkit. She grabbed her tools and a replacement chord or two, before approaching the metal hatch leading downstairs.
“Alright, I’m heading in! I’ll keep you updated every ten seconds or so.”
“Sounds good. And please, be careful, Hatsume.”
She nodded, and set down her things momentarily to open the hatch. For a second or two however, she had difficulty sustaining a solid grip on the handle. Her gloves seemed slick against the curved surface, and rather confusedly, she observed her hands to find that they were oddly wet.
Well that’s strange, she thought, wiping the substance on the thighs of her jumpsuit without a second thought.
“Having trouble with the hatch?”
She looked up to see the black-haired student staring at her, and just shrugged.
“Naw, my gloves were just a bit wet. I’m heading in now, uhhh…”
Hatsume paused for a moment to think of the kid’s name, but drew a complete blank. Realizing this, he glared offendedly at her.
“Seriously!? We’re over a semester in, and you still don’t know our names!?”
She just shrugged, and popped open the hatch to enter the floor below, “See ya in ten, guys!”
“For the last time, our names are—”
The hatch was closed before they could finish their sentences though, and seconds after that, Hatsume was jogging down the halls of floor six to find the area where the training dummy was located.