Hotaka, Minita, Kenshin and Suzuki are at the front of the class and Minita steps forward, “unfortunately Toshia couldn’t join us today due to hero-related work, however as you know today’s class will be all about showing off the results of your training and your improvements. The AA’s are coming up in a few weeks so hopefully you’ve all been working hard. Additionally, your ability mentors will demonstrate what they can do so that each of you can see the abilities of the ones training your classmates, please watch carefully as watching us in action might give you some new ideas on how to use your powers”.
Everyone heads out of the classroom and downloads into the simulation. Tatsuo raises his hand “Minita Sensei, as usual, I still have nothing to show everyone as my power has still not developed”, Kenshin interjects, “that’s not quite the case Tatsuo, you’ve been training hard on your sparring, swordsmanship and general strength and speed” Minita jumps in “that’s correct would anyone like to volunteer to spar with Tatsuo”. Yuka puts his hand up “if possible I would like to volunteer, we’re still both on a draw from our last sparring session, 12 wins each right”. Tatsuo smiles “I don’t think so, I’m pretty sure it was 12-11 to me”. Yuka shakes his head, “I must of hit you too hard in the head, there may even be permanent brain damage as you’ve clearly lost the ability to count, let me show you who is truly the better fighter”.
They both step out into the middle of a simulated dojo. They bow at each other and Kenshin shouts “Begin”. They start fighting, punches are thrown, blocked and parried. They both go to punch each other and simultaneously hit each other in the face knocking the other backwards. Tatsuo recovers and runs in swinging his arm, just before he hits Yuka in the face, Kenshin shouts out “ok both, well done, that’s enough”. They step back, bow towards each other, smile and fist bump. As they go to join the rest of the students Mizo turns to Shuichi, “so did Tatsuo win?”. Shuichi smirks, “I can see why you would think that but no, Yuka was ready for a super fast counter-attack, his foot was placed in a specific way so that he was prepared, if it had continued, Yuka definitely would have won”. Mizo smiles at Yuka and whispers to herself, “good job Yuka”.
Everyone applauds them and as the clapping subsided Minita talks to the group “it’s good to see your sparring has improved Tatsuo, you too Yuka, keep it up, Yuka while you’re here you might as well show us the improvement you’ve had with your power”. Yuka stops walking back to the group and punches the air “I can now make pockets in mid-air as well as being able to see exactly how much kinetic power each pocket has, I’m trying to make it so the kinetic energy doubles at a faster rate but as of yet I’ve had no success, that’s it from me, not much else to report” he points his hands toward the pocket and the golden circle disappears. “That’s great Yuka I’m sure that’ll come in handy when keeping that power of yours under control. So, who’s up next?”. Kame raises his hand, and everyone looks around shocked. Minita continues “that’s great Kame, it’s good to see you showing some initiative, do you want to come to the front” Kame walks forward and puts his hand in his pocket, he pulls out a spoon. He holds it and points to the spoon “I can now hold things” everyone looks at each other confused, Kenikai shouts out “You go Kame” and begins to clap, everyone else joins in. Kame faintly smiles and walks back to the group.
Mizo puts her hand up “if Kame can do it then so can I, I’d like to show my ability to control my anger” Minita nods “Ok Mizo, great to see some of you coming out of your shells, please, come forward”. Mizo turns to Hiro “hey would you be able to hit me with some objects”. Hiro nods. “Sure, I guess I’ll come join you and show people my progression as well, I’ve not gotten that much better but I guess I can make things move a little faster now”. she pulls out the bag of steel balls, takes a couple in her hand and they start to levitate from her hand “here goes”. They start moving fairly quickly towards Mizo and hit her in various places, the last one hits her in the head jolting her head back, everyone gasps. Mizo brings her head forward, takes a deep breath and smiles at the class. The class begin to applaud them both. “Well done you two, Mizo good to see you’re finally get that under control”.
Ryota puts his hand up “it may also be worth mentioning I still technically can’t use my abilities however I’m now able to see magic essence so hopefully with training will be able to cast magic spells soon”. Suzuki jumps in “on that note, I’d like to introduce myself for those of you who don’t know me I’m Ryota’s father, Ryota Suzuki, I’d like to demonstrate now what my son's abilities will look like when they activate and he’s had a little more training”. Minita nods her head and Suzuki steps forward. He closes both hands into fists and hits them together, as he does a series of asteroids rain down from above, he then casts a barrier spell around the entire class, the asteroids collide with the barrier but fall off and explode on the floor around the edges, as they explode they shoot fire everywhere. Suzuki breathes in heavily, sucking in all the fire into his mouth, he then holds out his hand flat and blows on it, as he does a fire snake appears from his mouth.
Everyone applauds and looks amazed, Suzuki bows. “This is just a taster of what a mage can do, right now I’m a high level mage but one day it’s likely my son will surpass me, and be able to do things even more incredible than that, in the mean time I’ll make sure to teach him everything I know”. The students look at Ryota in amazement. Daisuke puts his hand up “if you’re a powerful mage why have I never heard of you before, shouldn’t you be an S-ranked hero or something?”. Suzuki replies, “the Ryota family have never become heroes. Instead we usually work freelance, separately from HHQ, however we do occasionally work with them on certain cases should they require our help”. Minita steps forward “thank you for explaining a bit more about the Ryota family Suzuki, let’s move on to the next student, who’s next up?”.
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Kenikai steps forward! “Well I’ve been working on logging my powers in the diary but still there is no algorithm to my power, so maybe it is just completely random, because of this I haven’t had much training either, we’ve been mainly playing video games and going to the arcade”. Minita whispers to herself “Damn it Toshia, when I see him next I’ll remind him that he’s supposed to be training them not goofing off and playing video games” she starts to speak to Kenikai “Ok that’s fine, thank you Kenikai. Daisuke, Etsuko do you wanna show everyone what you’ve been working on?”. They both step forward, Etsuko stamps her foot on the ground and a small flame comes out, “oops sorry, can I start again?” she stamps her foot on the ground again, this time a gust of wind comes out, Minita jumps in “Etsuko relax, breathe, just like in practice” Etsuko takes a big breath, she stamps her foot on the ground and a chunk of earth shoots up out of the floor, she places her hand against it and it breaks into smaller pieces, she makes them float and then starts flinging them at high speeds towards Daisuke, nearly all of them go through except a couple which hit directly into him causing him to go flying backwards. “That’s great both of you, well done, Daisuke you nearly got them all this time, keep practicing, Etsuko just remember to stay calm and don’t panic. Thank you both for that”. The class clap.
“Ok that just leaves our class captain, Shuichi over to you” he steps forward and unsheathes his Katana, he gets into a combat stance and starts to swing his sword, his attacks are calculated and concise and he continues to swing it a few more times and then stops. He turns and aims his sword into the open space behind him and takes a deep breath, he swings it again, this time a small energy wave comes from the sword cutting through the air, he then sheathes his sword. Everyone applauds and Minita nods her head “well done Shuichi, you’ve made massive progress with your swordsmanship and that new skill should come in handy during the academic arenas”. Shuichi joins the others. “Ok, now I guess it’s time for us to show you what we can do. As I’m already here I might as well show you first”.
Minita reaches out her hand and faces it upwards, a red ball of fire appears in it. “I can create and manipulate fire, similar to Etsuko however I can only create a single element. Over many years through training, practice and experience I have managed to hone my skills learning nit only to control it but also improve it” as she says this the ball of fire slowly becomes orange, and then blue. The students start to feel the heat from where they are and cover their eyes. “As I mentioned there are 5 levels of flame, red, orange, blue, black and white, I’m also one of the only 3 living people that can create a black flame” as she says that the flame turns black, and the heat coming from it begins to increase drastically, all the students, Hotaka, Suzuki and Kenshin continue to cover their eyes and the students start take a step back. She throws the fireball into the distance, it continues for a while until eventually it explodes a large distance away, as it does a large dome of black fire is made burning the entire surrounding area. The students all begin to clap.
Hotaka steps forward and slaps her on the bum, “that’s my wife”. She turns around and glares at him. “I told you not in front of the students”. He awkwardly walks forward then takes a standing stance, looks up at the students and smiles “I guess I’ll go next, I’m sure you all know what I can do”. Kenshin steps forward “but very few of you know me or what I can do, so Hotaka how about we show them what we used to do in our training” they both smile, Kenshin starts to walk away and all the students look confused. Kenshin continues walking until he is a very large distance from everyone. Hotaka jumps and lands a large distance from the students and Kenshin, he pulls his arm back as if he’s about to punch in the direction of Kenshin. Everyone looks shocked. Hiro speaks up “is he about to try and take a full-force punch from Hotaka? I know this is a simulation but still that’s crazy”.
Tatsuo turns to Shuichi “I mean we know the old man’s amazing but, is he really going to try and stop the shockwaves from one of Titan’s punches”. Shuichi continues to watch whilst concentrating. Hotaka throws the punch and suddenly an incredible amount of air pressure hurtles towards Kenshin, it moves incredibly fast and destroys everything in its path, however, Kenshin continues standing there whilst it approaches him. The students start to look worried when suddenly Kenshin draws his sword and slices the air wall in half. The air pressure continues on both sides of him but Kenshin remains standing completely unharmed. The whole class look in amazement. They begin to start clapping. Hotaka and Kenshin bow at each other and join the others.
Minita gathers everyone together. “Ok so as you saw you’ve all come a long way since your first day in the academy but you’ve still got a long way before you can call yourselves heroes, so remember to keep training daily but don’t neglect your academic studies also. Hopefully some of you have learned a thing or two from today’s class, don’t forget to keep learning from your classmates and mentors. Good luck in the AAs in the coming weeks”. Everyone starts clapping.
Later that day several PA officers and Sargent Izanaki approach an old, wooden door and ring the bell, the door is answered by Ryota Imamaru. The SGT speaks “Imamaru, it’s good to see you again, we need your help” Imamaru nods and replies “Izanaki, please, come in” they are all sat on the couch, “Imamaru San we need you to find 2 very dangerous people, firstly a recruiter for the chess club named Shinji Hirata” he hands her a photo “we need to get him and question him about the club, its leader and their intentions. We also need you to find the person behind the random killings that have been happening in the past month, we don’t have a picture however we found their fingerprints on every body we’ve found so far in the various locations, unfortunately, their prints aren’t in the database so we’re relying on you to locate and possibly identify them. What we do have is one of the bodies with us. We know you’re the best in the Ryota family for this kind of job. Please can you help us?” Imamaru stands up. “Let’s get started”.