Thwack.
The sound cracked through the empty dojo, sharp and heavy.
Thwack.
"Nine hundred ninety-nine," a ragged voice counted.
Roronoa Zoro brought the heavy oak sword down, his muscles burning with a dull, familiar ache. Sweat stung his eyes and plastered his dark shirt to his back. He didn't wipe it away. He just tightened his grip.
"One thousand."
He let the tip of the sword hit the wooden floorboards and exhaled a long, shaky breath.
"Your stance is getting sloppy," a dry voice echoed from the doorway.
Zoro didn't turn around. He recognized the uneven footsteps. Master Kenji limped into the room, leaning heavily on his cane.
"It works," Zoro grunted, rolling his stiff shoulders.
"Against a stationary piece of wood, perhaps," Kenji replied, eyeing the boy's footing. "In a real fight, a wide stance is just an invitation to lose your legs. But I suppose in a world where kids shoot lasers from their eyes, nobody cares about footwork anymore."
Zoro clicked his tongue, sheathing the wooden blade. He hated it when the old man got bitter. Quirk or no Quirk, a sword was a sword. If you cut something, it bled. It was the only logic Zoro cared about.
"I'm doing another five hundred," Zoro said.
"You're going to school," Kenji corrected, pointing his cane at the exit. "Get out of here before I have the attendance board knocking on my doors again."
The walk to Aldera Junior High was loud. It always was.
Zoro moved through the bustling streets of Musutafu with ten-kilogram iron weights strapped beneath his uniform trousers. Every step required deliberate effort, but his face remained completely blank.
Above him, a man with wings flew to work. Across the street, a vendor used a minor fire mutation to roast chestnuts. The world had moved on from simple muscle and steel. It was an era of flashy powers and heroes in spandex.
Zoro slept through most of the school day. He didn't care about the hero course applications his classmates were screaming about. He didn't care about the career forms. He just rested his head on his desk, his arms crossed, waiting for the bell to ring so he could go back to the only thing that made sense: training.
Late afternoon cast long, orange shadows over the pavement as Zoro took the backstreets home. The quiet was a relief.
Until it shattered.
"Stop him!" someone screamed from a nearby convenience store.
Zoro stopped walking.
A man with a minor speed mutation was sprinting down the narrow street, clutching a stolen register drawer. He was fast—a blur of desperate motion heading straight towards Zoro. Right behind the thief, a rookie Pro Hero covered in aquatic scales was shouting warnings, raising his hands to unleash a blast of water.
Zoro didn't step aside. He didn't run like the other pedestrians scrambling for cover.
Instead, his eyes locked onto the approaching thief. His right hand instinctively dropped to his left hip—grasping at empty air where a hilt should be. His stance shifted. He lowered his center of gravity, his muscles coiling like a spring. The air around him seemed to drop in temperature.
One step closer, Zoro thought, his thumb twitching as if pushing a sword from its scabbard.
Before the thief could cross into Zoro's striking range, the rookie hero blasted a massive wave of pressurized water. But the hero hadn't planted his feet. The recoil sent the hero slipping backward onto the wet concrete with a loud crash. The water missed the thief completely, splashing harmlessly against a brick wall.
The thief laughed, taking a sharp left turn into an alleyway and vanishing.
Zoro slowly relaxed his stance, his hand dropping from his hip. He stared at the groaning hero on the ground.
"Tch. Pathetic," Zoro muttered, turning his back on the scene to continue his walk home.
"You were going to cut him down."
Zoro paused. The voice came from the shadows of a narrow gap between two buildings. He turned his head, his hand once again hovering near his hip.
A man stepped out. He looked exhausted, wrapped in a thick, gray scarf, with dark hair falling over bloodshot eyes. His hands were shoved deep into the pockets of a worn trench coat.
"I saw your hand," the strange man said, his voice flat, but his gaze piercing. "Your body shifted. You didn't flinch at the water, and you didn't look at the hero. You were measuring the distance to the target's neck."
Zoro turned fully to face him, his eyes narrowing. He didn't say a word. He just waited.
The man pulled a hand out of his pocket, scratching the back of his neck. "A middle schooler with killer intent and muscle memory for a weapon he isn't carrying. That's a dangerous combination."
The stranger's eyes locked with Zoro's, and for a split second, Zoro felt an intense, suffocating pressure—the aura of someone who had seen real battle.
"Who's asking?" Zoro demanded, his voice low.
The man offered a tired, almost unnoticeable smirk. "Someone who thinks you're wasting your time at Aldera. Tell me, kid... what do you know about U.A. High?"