The students who had failed their tests—Ashido, Minoru, Kaminari, Sato, Kirishima, and Sero—stood dejected together as they waited for Aizawa sensei to come announce the results of the practical.

  “Everyone…” moaned Ashido, tears leaking from the sides of her eyes. “I’m looking forward…hic…to lots of awesome stories from the trip.”

  Minoru let himself fade into the background as Midoriya attempted to console his distraught classmates. He didn’t recall anyone being excluded from the trip, and sure enough the door slammed open and Aizawa strode into the room with unusually high energy.

  “That’s the bell. Be seated,” he said. “About your final exams. Sadly, we had some failures. As such…you’re all going to summer training camp!”

  “What a twist!” shouted Ashido and Kirishima in perfect sync.

  Aizawa continued. “Everyone cleared the written tests, but in the practical Kirishima, Kaminari, Ashido, Sato, Sero, and Minoru all failed. As the villains in this test, we teachers came up with assignments perfectly suited to all of you. Ones that would give you chances to devise winning strategies. If we hadn’t, none of you would’ve stood a chance.”

  Ojiro spoke up. “So when you said you were really going to crush us…”

  Aizawa inclined his head. “That was to push you. We are talking about training camp after all. More than anyone else, those who failed are in dire need of this. This was another rational deception!”

  There it was; Aizawa’s “rational deception” excuse. Minoru was pretty sure he just liked screwing with them. Admittedly, given how credulous most of the class was, he could kind of understand the appeal.

  Ida shot out of his seat. “Now that we’ve been lied to twice, aren’t you worried that our faith in you has been shaken?”

  “Perhaps. But consider the facts. It wasn’t entirely a lie. Failure is still failure. You six will receive special supplemental lessons. And to be honest, they’ll be far worse than summer school.”

  As the students who failed went pale, Minoru sank into his seat. He had no idea what to expect from these “supplemental lessons,” but extra work was definitely not something he was excited about.

  Although Minoru had been intending to go with the rest of the class on their shopping trip for summer training camp supplies, he and the rest of the kids who failed the practical exam were told to reserve that time for the first of their supplementary lessons. So here he was, dressed in his gym clothes after school in front of Aizawa, who was as deadpan as ever.

  Aizawa ran his gaze across the small group of dejected students. “All here? Good. Now who can tell me why you’re here?”

  “Because we failed the practical,” said a particularly dejected-looking Ashido. She had evidently greatly been looking forward to shopping with her classmates.

  “Yes, but why did you fail the practical?”

  “You said in class,” said Sero. “We didn’t come up with winning strategies.”

  “Exactly,” said Aizawa. “Strategy. Of the six of you, only two bothered to make a strategy at all—” Minoru puffed up his chest a bit at that. “—but then one of them failed to listen properly to his partner, resulting in them failing anyway.” Minoru deflated.

  Aizawa gestured to Sero and Kaminari. “The two of you were one of the fastest teams eliminated in your match against Midnight because you rushed in without a plan or any attempt to coordinate with one another.”

  He turned to Kirishima and Sato. “You two were one of the last teams to fail in your match against Cementoss, but you lost in the first few minutes. You can’t simply expect to be able to punch your way through every obstacle.”

  Finally, he indicated Ashido and Minoru. “As for you two, although you came up with a plan, it was one-sided and failed to play to your strengths, allowing Principal Nezu to divide and conquer. Honestly, it was only thanks to Ashido going off-script that you made it as far as you did.

  “Which brings us to today. Mineta, what would you say this group’s strength would be in the field?”

  Minoru glanced around at his classmates. “Well, with this particular group…capturing villains, I’d say.”

  Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

  Aizawa crossed his arms. “Elaborate. What caused you to pick that particular specialty?”

  Minoru shrugged. “It’s mostly the composition of the group. We’ve got Ashido and Sero to scout and provide mobility against speed-types, Kirishima to go toe-to-toe with physical Quirks, Sato to close out fights and otherwise provide muscle, Kaminari to serve as a deterrent for villains trying to close with us as well as counter group attacks, and Sero and I to secure villains once they have been subdued. We could probably do an okay job of disaster relief, but so many of our Quirks are best suited for either direct combat or capture that I figured that made more sense.”

  “Logically stated,” Aizawa said. “Do any of you disagree with Mineta’s evaluation?”

  The other kids shook their heads.

  “Very good. Now, consider the terrain.” Aizawa gestured to the gym, which was cluttered with what appeared to be concrete columns of various heights positioned at irregular intervals. There were enough columns that it was impossible to see the far side of the gym; once they were in the midst of them, Minoru wouldn’t be surprised if they were only able to see unobstructed about 5–7 meters in any direction. Honestly, it kind of looked like a forest made out of concrete…crap, they were totally being trained to respond to the villains during the summer training camp, weren’t they?

  “As you can see, Cementoss was kind enough to provide us with numerous obstacles. We will be playing villain tag in there. I will be the villain, and you will be the team sent to secure me. If I declare one of you tagged, you must sit out the rest of the fight. Otherwise, if you are able to either incapacitate me or get at least three students with their hands on me at once, then I’ll be out. Once the villains are out you will succeed and may go home.”

  He raised a hand to stop several of the students from asking questions. “However! I will have a ten minute head start to establish myself in there while you stay out here and make a plan of attack. Any questions?”

  “Can we use our Quirks?” asked Ashido.

  “Yes,” said Aizawa. “As will I. But for this scenario, try to keep destruction of the environment to a minimum. If you destroy a pillar here or there, that’s fine, but don’t try to level the field to find me.”

  “Any other restrictions?” asked Minoru.

  Aizawa shrugged. “Don’t leave the gym. If you get injured, yell out. We don’t have Recovery Girl monitoring us directly, so if you need help ask for it.” He looked away from Minoru. “And don’t just let Mineta here make all the plans. He may be the designated tactician, but I want everyone contributing at all stages. Understood?”

  After a chorus of “Yes, sensei!” Aizawa nodded and glanced at a clock on the wall. “Okay, your ten minutes of planning starts now. Good luck. Oh, and if any other teachers show up, they’re villains, too.” He turned and jogged into the gym.

  “Wait, other teachers?!” cried Ashido after him, but Aizawa was already lost to sight amongst the columns.

  “I kind of wish Jiro or Shoji had failed; they’d have made this challenge a lot easier,” grumbled Minoru to himself, before turning to face his classmates and jumping in place slightly when he discovered everyone looking at him. “Uh…do I have something on my face?”

  “Come on, Mineta, Aizawa sensei just said you’re our tactician!” said Kaminari, slapping Minoru on the shoulder. “So how are we going to corner Sensei? Preferably quickly. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’d rather go home sooner than later.”

  “I don’t think it’s going to be that easy…” Minoru hedged.

  Sato spoke up. “Can we even beat Aizawa sensei? Can’t he just erase our Quirks?”

  Well, that was no good. If the kids gave up before they’d started there was no way they could win. “We can,” said Minoru. “But it’s not his Erasure that’s the problem; it’s that capture tape of his. That and we have to find and somehow corner or surround him.”

  “Okay, so what’s your plan?” asked Ashido. “I know you’ve got one.”

  “Well, not a plan so much as…a general strategy, I guess,” hedged Minoru. “The way I see it, we have two conflicting needs: we need to locate Sensei, which is easier to do if we split up. But we also need to get multiple hands on him and ensure he doesn’t just pick us off one by one, which means we need to stick together.”

  “Small groups, then?” asked Sero.

  Minoru nodded. “That’s the best I can come up with. I think probably two groups: two forward scouts, and two fast-response teams following them, then as soon as someone gives a shout with Aizawa sensei’s position, we immediately collapse in toward it and try to surround him.”

  “Me and Ashido are clearly the scouts here,” said Sero. “Like you said, we’ve got the best mobility, especially with these sorts of obstacles.”

  Minoru nodded. “Yeah, that was my thought, too. With two people in each of the response teams trailing you, that means we should have three people to threaten Sensei with regardless of where he shows up.”

  “How do we split up those teams, though?” asked Sato.

  “I’ll follow Ashido,” said Kirishima, speaking up for the first time. “I’m not as fast, but if I run into her acid it’s not going to hurt me as much as the rest of you thanks to my Hardening.”

  “I guess that means I should be trailing Sero?” said Sato. “If we want to split physical Quirks evenly.”

  Minoru shrugged. “Makes sense to me. What about you, Kaminari?”

  “Mm, I think I’ll trail after Ashido, too. Her acid would make your grapeshot harder to use, right? And if I can get close to him, I might be able to shock Sensei without hitting my teammates.”

  “Good thinking,” said Minoru. “Then I’ll be with you, Sato.”

  “Your ten minutes are up!” came a shout from somewhere in the concrete pillars.

  “Let’s go capture sensei and head home!” cheered Ashido, before rushing for the right side of the gym, closely followed by Kirishima and Kaminari.

  “Heck, yeah!” shouted Sero, and with a thwip of tape, he went soaring towards the left side, Minoru and Sato in hot pursuit.

  Minoru had a feeling it wasn’t going to be quite as easy as all that, but he couldn’t fault the energy. He put his head down, pumped his arms, and ran after Sero and Sato into the forest of concrete.

  during the training camp?” Also true! Nezu stepped in and had Aizawa changed the plan for reasons that should be apparent from the setup of their game of “tag”…