A Powerful Silence

Chapter 16

The waiting room was awkward and tense. Two obvious sides were formed - Jiro and Bakugo on one side with basically everyone else on the other side. Bakugo and Jiro were... somewhat at ease whilst everyone else just looked awkward about it.

It was understandable, but they could at least try and hide it just a little bit better.

They pushed it to the back of their mind however, a much more important event was happening today. It was the Sports Festival, and both Jiro and Bakugo were determined to show off their new skills, developed under Midoriya's watchful eye, for several reasons.

Obviously they both wanted to show that they were candidates for the internship program that would be happening in the following week, but more so they wanted to show that they were thankful to Midoriya for his training.

He had told them he would be watching but they weren't exactly sure where from. Regardless, they wanted to make him feel valued and honestly just wanted to make sure he would stay at the school. He was going to make his final decision fairly soon and they suspected he was leaning towards staying at U.A as he was working fairly hard to keep up with the course work outside of class hours whilst he was guiding Jiro and Bakugo. 

But they both did have other reasons for showing off their new skills, and it wasn't even slightly just so they could beat the shit out of the rest of their classmates.

Alright maybe a little. Just a little.

But Jiro and Bakugo both had kind of similar reasons, both directly related to their friendship with Midoriya.

Bakugo wanted to show that he had learned how to take criticism but more importantly was humble enough to be capable of learning from Midoriya and having changed over time. He wanted to prove that he was a different person, a better person, one that Midoriya could believe and trust in.

Jiro meanwhile wanted to prove that her time training with Midoriya had been valuable, and that she truly appreciated having him around. She knew she could demonstrate that she was thankful for his friendship and presence easily enough (hopefully), but right now she wanted to demonstrate how useful his talents in helping them train were. His ability to break down and analyse not only their quirks but their fighting styles and identify any weaknesses was incredible, and his ability and willingness to help them with no expectation of a return beyond their friendship, which was already a given, was simply saint-like. 

Basically, Jiro just wanted to show Midoriya how important he was. She wasn't sure if winners got to give speeches, but if she did she would definitely credit him. Although both she and Bakugo would be competing for it, hey, maybe she'd get a speech for second place.

But she was still gonna try for first.

Both students were brought out of their thoughts when Iida burst into the room, declaring that it was time to move into the arena as their class was being introduced by Present Mic now. Jiro sighed as she got up, Bakugo similarly standing up beside her as they quietly walked out of the room, a little earlier than the rest of the class who were all hyping each other up.

Jiro rolled her eyes at them as she left the room with Bakugo, waiting by the tunnel for the rest of the class to be mostly caught up to them.

"ANNNNNND HERE IS HERO COURSE CLASS 1-A!" Present Mic declared loudly as the students within the class began walking out, and Jiro couldn't help the chills on her skin or the smile on her face as the crowd cheered for them. 

Bakugo had just rolled his eyes at the crowd and barely didn't scowl at the reaction of the crowd, and for the reaction of the rest of his class who were simply living up the fame, all of them smiling and laughing as they played themselves up for the crowd. It made Bakugo cringe so hard watching them try and get more attention from the crowd.