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CHAPTER 85: End of the Lesson
"Are you three brainless or what? Don't you get the meaning of a three-man squad?"
From the moment he realized what was occurring before him, Izuku was unable to take his eyes off the scene. He looked at the blonde boy, Naruto, still struggling against his bonds, as he kicked his feet off the ground. But it was his eyes that took Izuku aback. Normally, under these circumstances, a person would exude a sense of helplessness, but Izuku could see nothing but fight in the boy's.
"What of it?!"
"Teamwork," The silver-haired man snapped. His voice carried weight like Shouta's when he was about to give a lesson the hard way.
"Why use teamwork if there are only two bells?" the young Sakura argued, her voice high and petulant. Izuku couldn't reconcile this version of her with the girl who had faced down All for One.
"Of course, this is a test," Kakashi said matter of factly, "A test to purposely place you against each other. The intention was to select those who could prioritize teamwork. Despite this…." His gaze landed on each of them in turn. Though his face was covered, there was a clear judgement in his tone. "Sakura. You were only concerned for Sasuke and completely ignored Naruto. Naruto. All you did was run solo. And Sasuke…." A boot pressed harder into the dark-haired boy's back. "You deemed the other two as burdens."
Izuku, had an over analytical take on everything that caught his interest, mostly heroes and those who were playing the role. Right now he was inflicting that habit, and watching this with great intensity. But then something strange happened, and everything went mute. As if he had been reading a book, and flipped the page only to find the words smudged.
The scene before them flickered, sound cutting off as if submerged in water. Izuku saw lips move, and he was certain they were arguments rising and falling but heard nothing, only the echo of Sakura's quiet breath beside him.
'Why can't I hear them?' He glanced at Sakura, curious to see what kind of expression was making now. Yet she appeared like stone.
Sakura didn't need to hear the scene to know that it was on the cusp of revealing what she had been concealing from this world. For her, this was a small mercy. The last thing she wanted in this moment was to expose more of her bleeding heart.
A kunai flashed in Kakashi's hand, pressed to Sasuke's throat. It made Izuku's stomach lurch and his instincts to move kicked in. The one that made him move without thinking. But Sakura caught him before he could attempt it, pulling him back by his wrist but not meeting his eyes as she did so. And he knew she wouldn't have words for him right now. All he could do was watch. None of this was real. Not anymore.
"Sakura. Kill Naruto, or Sasuke dies." Kakashi's voice was like a whip and there wasn't a hint of resistance as it fell down on Sakura, delivering the message, embedding it into her like a welt, leaving pain behind after a strike.
The children froze, their faces drained of color. Sakura's grip on his arm tightened. "That's my sensei," she whispered.
'Her sensei?' Izuku couldn't wrap his head around how she was calm when there was someone threatening the lives of others.
The kunai lifted. Kakashi straightened, tucking the blade away as if it had never been drawn.
"On top of a hostage situation, with two impossible choices, and you end up dead. Every mission is a life-risking assignment."
He walked to a stone monument at the edge of the field, his fingers brushing the names etched into its surface. "These are all shinobi who are called the village's heroes."
Naruto, still tied to the post, perked up. "I'm gonna get my name engraved there too! A hero! I'm not gonna die like a dog!"
Kakashi's eyes darkened. "They're not just ordinary heroes. They're heroes who were killed in action."
Naruto seemed to bulk with confusion until Sakura explained it meant they were killed while taking on missions.
"This is a memorial. The names of my friends are also here."
He turned back to them. "I'll give you one more chance. A more grueling battle for the bells."
Bells? Izuku's gaze snapped to Kakashi's hip, two small silver bells glinting in the sun. And it finally began to dawn on him what he was looking at. This memory of Sakura's, her past, her experience. This was more than just a scene being played on a stage within the confines of her mind.
"Those who want to take on the challenge, eat lunch. But don't let Naruto have any."
Sakura exhaled softly beside him. "He warned us the day before not to eat breakfast, or we'd puke."
Izuku understood instantly. They hadn't eaten at all. Just like Sakura had done to them.
"It's punishment for breaking the rules," Kakashi continued. "If someone lets him eat, that person will be disqualified on the spot. I make the rules here. Got it?"
Then he vanished. Izuku couldn't follow his movements if he even made any through the smoke. Not with a burst of speed, but with the same eerie stillness Sakura used when she slipped between shadows. One moment he was there, the next, only the whisper of displaced air.
The scene shifted. Young Sakura and Sasuke sat with their lunch boxes. Naruto, still bound, declared he could go without, only for his stomach to growl loud enough to startle birds from the trees,
"Here." Sasuke held out his lunch.
Izuku looked at Sakura, but her gaze was fixed on the memory, her expression unreadable.
"I think that's enough," she said softly, pulling Izuku back.
He caught one last glimpse, of a young Sakura offering her lunch too, before the world erupted in smoke. Kakashi reappeared, furious.
"Wait, I want to see!" Izuku started.
But Sakura was already dragging him away, the memory dissolving like mist in sunlight and they along with it.
..
..
..
When Izuku opened his eyes again, he was no longer standing on that hill, and there were no longer three kids being glared down by their sensei. Izuku could feel the sunlight this time as it hit his face. It was as if the world had snapped into focus with the violence of a rubber band being pulled tight and released without warning.
Mainly because they were falling from the sky.
The landing was rougher than anticipated, Izuku had been wrapped under his knees and shoulders when Sakura hit the ground in a crouch that shook his bones.
Izuku's eyes were still glazed over longer than Sakura's and she had to shake him by the shoulder to bring his head back above the surface. The scent of pine and sweat flooded his senses but it was still hard for him to spit out words, a few caught in his throat.
"You-that was-
"Welcome back," she said, her gaze was distant now, and Izuku wondered if she was still half lost in the memory they had just seen.
He looked at his hands that had been lost in the smoke of Black-whip, it had long dissolved before Izuku even got his barrings on reality again. He flexed his fingers carefully watching for any sign of the tendrils, almost afraid they would jump out like snakes from a hole.
'I don't feel it anymore,'
Another voice burst through the forest and the silence around them.
"FOUND THEM" Ochaco came floating from above the canopy, and put her hands together for landing.
There was the clear sound of rustling and leaves and branches snapping underfoot before the rest of the class erupted from the treeline like a stampede.
"Midoriya! Sakura! Are you okay?!" Kyoka called rushing with everyone towards them.
"Are you injured?!" Tenya's arms chopped through the air, his glasses glinting in the dappled sunlight but it didn't hide the fact his composure was lost.
"What the heck was that?!" Hanta came barrelling through.
Izuku opened his mouth to reassure them but his eyes kept flickering back to Sakura who stood unnervingly still. Her eyes were slightly void. It was like they had both just been staring at the surface of each other and were unwillingly plunged beyond that point. And now knowing what lay beneath it was hard to just glance above.
She didn't miss a beat when Momo came to look over her wounds, quick to assure her that these were minor injuries she was capable of healing on her own.
"OUTTA MY WAY!" Katsuki exploded forward, his palms detonating with full force. Just as they expected the wind to blow and the moon to rise. However for all his consistency, one of Katsuki's many talents included taking you by surprise.
Before anyone could react and before Katsuki's feet even hit the ground, he had gone into attack mode. Opening his palms wide, already a sign of aggression for him, and clenched his fingers around Sakura's neck bringing them into the dirt. The impact sent them skidding across the grass, Katsuki's knee planted in her stomach, his free hand crackling.
"Gotcha!"
Everyone turned to ice as they registered what happened. The same Sakura who had practically strolled through their combined attacks without breaking a sweat and shattered all of their attempts of capture had been tackled?
"Time's not up yet," Katsuki snarled. While everyone's eyes had been taken off the goal, distracted by what they perceived as a priority, he wasn't willing to miss this chance. His fingers scrabbled at her belt, searching for the bell only to pause. His crimson eyes narrowed. "The hell...?"
The bell was gone.
Sakura blinked up at him, seemingly just as surprised. "Huh. Must've fallen off somewhere." she chuckled. A soft, breathless sound that made Katsuki's eye twitch. "Oh well."
Something in Katsuki snapped and everyone heard that break because their mouths went dry and their foreheads became cold with sweat.
"OH WELL?! YOU!" His palm lit up, the heat of his explosion washing over her face, his teeth bared in a snarl.
Then the class descended like a swarm.
"KACCHAN, STOP!"
"That's ENOUGH!"
Hands grabbed at Katsuki's arms, and his shoulders, hauling him back as he thrashed like a wild animal about to be stuffed in a cage. Sakura didn't move, just watched him with that same infuriating calm, even as the explosion in his palm sputtered and died under the weight of his classmates' restraint.
She exhaled hard enough for her chest to visibly rise, her head turned staring into the distance of an enclosure of ferns.
..
..
..
Through a circular frame, Shouta watched as his class strapped down Katsuki, attempting to reign him in while he continued to rave after being removed from Sakura. He was not short on energy, his stamina always holding strong when it came to getting what he wanted.
He gripped a branch above to keep balance, before handing the binoculars over to Toshinori for viewing of the situation. They had been the first to rush out after Izuku and Sakura had become stuck in mid-air and appeared unresponsive.
"Seems we weren't needed after all," he muttered dryly. His dark eyes still tracking the chaos that was his students, as if he was waiting for the next bomb to drop.
"That's a relief," Toshinori seemed present but his voice was very distant while he observed the group. Shouta couldn't see that his frame of vision had fallen directly onto Izuku, who was currently attempting and failing to placate Katsuki along with Shoto, who only seemed to be throwing fuel on that pyre thinking his words were water instead of gas.
Toshinori knew this was going to have to be addressed as soon as possible.
..
..
..
The area around them had been torn to tatters and lay in ruins thanks to the unexpected outburst of Izuku's quirk. It gave the appearance of a battlefield. When the only one they were battling right now was Katsuki. Despite that they were still trying to calm Katsuki without Momo actually creating a serum to neutralize his temperament, Sakura decided that this would be the best time to address her classmates.
"Enough. I have something to say,"
It was a simple statement but had enough impact to draw complete silence in an instant, the same way Aizawa's presence caused them to turn into rigid statues in homeroom. They moved around until they stood in a loose circle around Sakura. Eijiro and everyone who had the misfortune of being knocked down by her managed to come to and find them from the commotion. It had been several minutes of the class wrangling Katsuki while Sakura had just watched, turning to stone for that time.
"I know things didn't go as expected, but I'm impressed by all of you."
Kyoka crossed her arms, her earphone jacks twitching skeptically as she pointed them at Sakura. She was someone who wasn't afraid to point out the facts bluntly, no matter how admonishing they were even to herself. Her parents always taught her that while it was important to have heartstrings of steel that couldn't be tugged by simple dismissal of your craft, you still needed to be flexible to hear the sounds properly and to admit to the truth in front of you. Or you won't be able to improve. That musician doctrine had served her well in her training too.
"You were still running circles around us."
"That's not the point." Her gaze swept over them, lingering on each face, their bruises that they brushed off, the dirt clots on their costumes, open wounds that the wind poured pain into, and the weariness on their faces that didn't match up with the determination in their eyes. This was a very different class than when she left. "I can see how much you've improved. How much stronger you've become."
A pause. "And you passed the test."
All they could hear for a good minute was the forest breathing, and then an avalanche of voices toppling over one another trying to get a word in, but when 19 voices combined it just turned into noise that couldn't be deciphered in more than snippets. And that's what Sakura's ears were overtaken with.
"What?"
"But we didn't get the bell!" Denki blurted, his voice cracking.
"I thought you only won if you captured it!"
Sakura's lips quirked. "That wasn't the point."
"BUT THAT WAS THE POINT!" A few of them synchronized.
"WIPE THAT SMUG LOOK OFF YOUR FACE AND EXPLAIN RIGHT NOW DAMMIT!" Katsuki demanded. He hated it when Sakura was so nonchalant, especially in situations where she should be squirming. It was like watching the surface of a river stay completely still when a storm was raging around it.
She stepped forward, the grass crunching softly under her foot. "I went through a similar test once. Just like you, I thought the goal was absolute I had to follow the rules, take the bell, and win. A test where the stakes were high and the person who made the rules seemed unrelenting in the standards he set," her chin lifted, peering through the canopy at the sky, the wind drying her eyes, and any expression of vulnerability well masked. "But the truth was something else entirely."
Sakura looked down again, and held up a single finger, "One bell. One winner. One on top. Sound familiar?"
Yes, everyone understood immediately. It's what they have been hearing throughout the entire year. Shouta and all their teachers had drilled them on this throughout their lessons and classes. They even had the number one hero standing as an example to them every day. No matter how many of them wanted to be heroes, only one person was going to be able to stand at the top of the first-place pedestal with their chest raised and fist high.
"We're constantly told that only one of us can be considered number one, and although we're aiming for the same goal we're always in competition together."
"So you're saying that's bad kero?" asked Tsuyu.
"Not at all," Sakura waved, "It's good to want to be the best, but that wasn't what I wanted you to learn. Tell me, I set the rules specifically to pin you against me, and me alone, but also to isolate you from each other because there was only one bell, hence there could only be one winner. So why is it that despite this, you all worked together and coordinated this plan in the first place?"
There was some obvious pulling at non-existent threads and wandering eyes at the question. But to Sakura, it was a clear sign they already knew the answer.
"Because you knew you couldn't beat me." The brazen manner of her voice felt like a physical punch. "I set conditions where you all had free range to fight me, and for a while, you probably thought that you might have a chance if I was taking on everyone at once and giving you an opening. Which makes sense and would work in other cases,"
But she wasn't another case. They had been around her long enough to see the range of her abilities and how well she channeled them. That was just another consequence of growing stronger. It was easier to gauge the difference between opponents the more their experience bar filled.
To them, it felt as if she realized they had been so overwhelmed by her that they couldn't even devote themselves to obtaining their goal, which was to get the bell and become the sole winner, and instead surrendered meekly to working together just for the sliver of a chance to even the odds.
Izuku claimed that Sakura was working an angle with this training, and even though they chose to come together, a lot of doubts were still swimming around them about that. Sakura had set such a seemingly tangible goal by dangling a bell in front of them instead of offering a straightforward match that involved taking down their opponent until they admitted defeat. Now they could see that Izuku's prediction had been right and there was a motivation.
"You have to learn to see what's beneath the underneath,"
Katsuki was sizzling and his teeth were close to cracking from the pressure he put on them, "So this was one big joke and you were pulling the wool over our eyes with this bell?"
"No. If you were actually able to get the bell on your own, you would've won the challenge but that doesn't mean you achieved the goal I set. This wasn't meant to be some battle royal to take a title as number one in class, you all set that ambition for yourselves. I was creating a situation in hopes you would reach a certain outcome,"
Minoru scratched his head voicing his confusion before his classmates. "So... we passed by losing?"
"You passed by working together" She gave them a few seconds to let that sink in before continuing. "Today, heroes scramble over each other for fame, for credit, for pay. They want to defeat villains alone because they want the world to see them as a single pillar bearing the load of everything. But what happens when you face someone you can't beat on your own? What happens when lives are on the line, and your pride gets in the way? You can't undo death,"
This year alone they had faced enough of that reality, when they were all the subjects of danger and yet they couldn't take their own lives into account alone.
"Teamwork isn't just strategy. It's survival. And it's responsibility. Because when you fail as a hero, other people can also die, not just you."
The air is so brittle it could snap. No one speaks, what is there to say? Platitudes won't cut it right now. The weight of her words settled over them like a shroud.
Then Katsuki snarled, "Why the hell did you go through all this trouble just to teach us that?"
Sakura met his glare without flinching. "Because this was how I was taught."
Tenya adjusted his glasses. "And what about your instruction at the beginning? 'Come at me like you want to kill me'?"
Sakura's smile was razor-thin. "Tell me if a hero and a villain face each other, equal in strength, equal in power... who wins?"
Several voices that weren't afraid to get the question wrong answered as if it was the most obvious. "The hero."
"Why?" Sakura challenged. "Because heroes always win in the end in the stories? That holding that title give you immunity to defeat? If so you need to open your eyes. The difference between a hero and a villain on all accounts in power has one defining difference. Morality. In this world heroes don't kill, they have penalties for causing damage and constantly need to protect those around them. Think about what happened in Kamino. A villain with the same strength as All Might be devastated and killed so many so easily because he wasn't restrained by any rules or code.
The intent to kill, to move without hesitation can give you an entirely different outcome in battle."
Shoto then chided in, "We don't fight to kill."
"It's not about killing. It's about surviving, and how far we're willing to go to protect what we care about despite our morals."
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- (Bleach crossover) Kunoichi amongst Reapers: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
-Commission: Demon slayer x My hero academia (PART 1 & 2)
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-Kunoichi amongst Heroes WHAT IF SPIN OFF: Dorms and Exams
-Kunoichi amongst Pirates chapter (36, 37. 38)
-Crossroads of Fate chapter 27, 28, 29, 30
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