shark bait / bnha

nervous

Her class sits in a small room with few tables and chairs, where the nervous unconscious tapping of feet and pen clicking fills the room. Very few groups of kids are talking, and they do so quietly.

Shinso fiddles with his fingers across from her, glaring at the ground deep in his thoughts.

(Name) had recommended to him to do more training with his own fighting abilities, since it wasn't too hard to tell that he relied too much on his quirk. They had practiced small sparring together very few times, always in Shinso's backyard. ( There was no way (Name) was introducing him to the hell that was her neighborhood. )

The difference in his own physical state in terms of muscle wasn't much. Sure there was some progress compared to six weeks ago, but even some of the smaller kids in 1-A were still bigger than him. Of course they are, they've been training for months, don't compare your friends to others.

She doesn't like to let her mind wander and overthink, so she quietly speaks up. "What are you nervous for?" Stupid question, stupid question, what do you think—

Shinso snaps out of his small stupor and his eyes fly up to meet hers. "I'm not sure how we're gonna get past the first obstacle. We don't even know what it is yet right?"

She hums in response, thinking for a second. "They can't dwindle down their group of kids participating in the other events too quickly, so I'm sure we can get to the second part of the festival,"

He nods. "Have you trained your quirk at all?"

(Name) raises an eyebrow in response to look at him in confusion. "There's not much training you can really do with a mental quirk. We'd need support items,"

Shinso's face reddens for a moment as he chuckles awkwardly. "Righ-Right,"

Midnight comes in with a joyous expression and tells them to stand at their exit point. Everyone in the room gets up, albeit hesitantly. 

As they all quietly walk out of the room, she falls in line next to Shinso and glances at him. "Don't be so nervous, you'll focus on it too much. You're perfectly capable,"

He smiles at her and nods, standing up slightly more straight than before. Though, it's not much progress compared to his usual posture. ( He should really try to fix that, it can't be healthy. )

Present Mic calls their class and they walk out, though the introduction is short and there's not much cheering in response. Everyone begins to move towards the center of the field and stand with their classes in preparation.

The race is announced and Shinso shifts next to her. "This seems really targeted towards people with helpful quirks," Please don't insult yourself.

"Emitter types I'm assuming, those quirks are always wanted in the hero field,"

Shinso doesn't answer.

The hallway leading to the outside where the race will take place seems big, until you shove over 100 students into it. It's hard to breathe and the distant rumbling of the crowd bangs throughout her skull. There's pure determination and hope drilled into all of the kids that stand inside this hall; that it's almost more suffocating than the lack of oxygen.

She lost Shinso in the crowd at some point, and she isn't quite sure she'll be able to find him again. 

Multiple different memories have been flying into her head, no matter how many mental barriers she attempts to put up.

The girl two people away from her has bipolar, the person in front of her hates his abusive grandpa, someone far behind her is terrified of being left alone.

(Name) almost doesn't realize when the race begins until everyone around her begins shoving. God this seems so unsafe, she thinks, someone could probably get thrown to the ground and trampled. How little do they care for student's personal safety during this?

A chill runs through the air for a moment before the sound of cracking ice and yelling from far ahead begins, and in a moment of fight or flight, she luckily jumps. The people around her are stuck to the ground and she weaves through them, attempting to not fall.

When light suddenly floods her senses, her body goes into overdrive for a moment. There's just so much NOISE—

Multiple students, mostly hero, that avoided the ice trap laid down are fighting robots that had been at the entrance exam. These seem much, much larger however. Apparently, they don't care for personal safety all that much, to answer the previous question.

Running from robots isn't hard when you've been running from your problems for 15 years.

She sees Shinso in front of her, mounted atop students as some sort of king. It's metal, but not a threat.

She runs past him with a little salute as he grins at her in return, though his eyes hold surprise in them. 

Have a little more faith in me, god dammit!

Her lungs ache as she slowly comes to a stop, her eyes staring ahead at the nothing that lays in front of her. Well, not nothing, but very little ground that she cannot step on.

The ropes that string across the empty vast of canyon ahead aren't that thick, and her hands have already begun to sweat. Hell no, hell no.

It's nerve wracking, extremely so, and the fact she hasn't had an anxiety attack or passed out yet is surprising. It takes her much longer than she'd like to cross the entirety of the canyon, and lots of kids have now passed her.

(Name) stares at the tiny lumps in the ground as kids in front of her step around them. ( Some step straight onto them and don't come back down, but she'd like to ignore that. )

A person that can't seem to step onto the minefield stands off to the side, and it's not hard to tell even by someone without a quirk like hers that they feel hopeless.

She doesn't help them, and starts on the minefield instead.

There's a yell and, is that a cannon?

An object, with presumably a student on it goes flying ahead of her. She thinks they're screaming louder than the ones that yell behind her in disbelief. (Name) tries to ignore that as well, going back to avoiding the certain pain that awaits her if she is to step on the mines.

( Step on the mines, some of her says, let rash burn your skin and fire sear your bones. Feel the pain those before you feel, those you've left behind in your own selfishness. )

It takes another span of time for her to finally get passed the minefield and start sprinting to the end of the finish line. 

Some thirty or so have already finished, and she can only begin to hope that they haven't already cut off the next participants for the second round.

By the time she crosses the finish line and Present Mic announces her place and name, her eyes have drooped and her body begs for water. There's a small rumble in her stomach and Shinso walks up to her.

When did he finish?

He grins at her, though her vision doesn't seem to be working too well at the moment.

"We've made it,"

( Just a little story note now that the chapter is over, I am uneducated on how honorifics in Japan work, so they will not be used in this story. Apologies. )