Chapter 2: The Pink Companion on the Yellow Bus
The bus to U.A. Academy hummed with a low, electric vibration that travelled up through the floor and into the soles of (Suzuki Saito)'s shoes. It was a clean, modern sound, a far cry from the diesel grumble of his past life's public transport. He sat stiffly, his backpack—a durable, tactical-looking thing bulging with more than just textbooks—resting between his feet on the floor. His fingers tapped a slow, arrhythmic pattern on its padded strap.
Tap-tap. Pause. Tap.
His eyes, a sharp, unnatural shade of crimson—a side-effect of some dormant, useless Quirk factor in this body, he assumed—methodically scanned the other occupants. It wasn't curiosity, not really. It was assessment. A threat analysis of a bus full of teenagers.
There was a boy with elongated fingers idly drumming a complex beat on the window. A girl with shimmering, scale-like skin on her neck reading a pamphlet on Hero Ethics. Another whose hair seemed to be made of softly twisting vines. The air smelled of anticipation, cheap cologne, cotton uniforms, and the faint, ozone-like tang of latent Quirks.
(Suzuki) looked away, focusing instead on the road streaming past the window. His gaze was fixed, intense, dissecting the familiar route to the most famous school in the world. The city blurred into a smear of colour and steel, but his mind was crystal clear.
He was older now. Sixteen. Six years had bled away since he'd woken up in a child's body, six years of meticulously, obsessively building. He'd adapted to life in Japan not just well, but with the ruthless efficiency of a survivalist preparing for a siege. He'd also, crucially, improved his body. The spindly frame of a ten-year-old had been reshaped through a regimen that bordered on self-flagellation.
He'd mastered—or as close to 'mastered' as one could get without a Quirk—some martial arts. Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu for groundwork, leverage, and the sweet, egalitarian promise that size could be negated. Boxing for footwork, distancing, and the simple, brutal poetry of a well-placed fist. His muscles weren't bulging, All Might-esque monuments; they were lean, corded things, all tensile strength and endurance, hidden under his standard-issue gakuran.
Academically? In his previous school, he'd been one of the highest-ranked students. He'd learned science to a sufficient degree, achieving top marks in numerous subjects. All thanks to his developed adult mind. Being a person who had already gone through the mental wringer once allowed him to fully utilize the brain plasticity of the adolescent body he now inhabited. During that critical period, he'd been able to memorize vast amounts of information with terrifying ease. It felt less like learning and more like downloading data onto a fresh, high-capacity hard drive.
And, without mentioning it, he had also improved his inventions.
The backpack at his feet gave a soft clink-thump as the bus went over a pothole. Inside were the fruits of six years of trial, error, soldering iron burns, and several small, contained explosions that had terrified (Suzuki Hana) and required creative lying about 'chemistry projects.' They weren't Iron Man suits, but they were something. Tools. His first, fragile steps towards a power that wasn't biological.
In the same moment he was mentally cataloguing his preparations, a pink shape entered his peripheral vision and began moving towards him.
He didn't react immediately, still lost in the calculus of his own future. But the moment the stranger reached his side, his training kicked in. It was a subtle thing—a slight tension coiling in his shoulders, his head turning not with a jerk, but with a smooth, controlled motion that brought the newcomer into full focus.
A girl.
With pink skin.
And short, curved horns.
Her eyes were dark, but the pupils were a vibrant, startling yellow. Her shape seemed utterly bizarre compared to the normal people from (Suzuki)'s previous life. But in this life, it was normal for people to acquire many different traits along with their superhuman powers, their Quirks. Most of these Quirks could be major physical changes: gaining an extra appendage, losing one, or changing skin colour. And so on.
Therefore, he kept his face neutral.
His red eyes focused on her yellow-pupiled ones. His blue hair, styled in a practical, short crop, didn't even rustle.
"Hi! Are you also heading to the entrance exam?"
The girl's voice was pleasant, layered with a bright, enthusiastic lilt. That lilt, combined with the memories he had meticulously documented from the original work, somehow allowed him to identify this girl. He managed to remember her character from the anime.
[Mina Ashido].
This girl was one of the people in Class 1-A at the Hero Academy. Plus, she possessed the ability to emit acid from her hands. Acid capable of dissolving metal with great ease. Furthermore, her skin was resistant to her own power, so she wasn't affected by the acid she secreted.
A moment passed. (Mina) noticed the boy in front of her, who appeared to be about her height, had stopped talking and was staring. She felt a flutter of shyness and glanced at the floor briefly. But her natural enthusiasm quickly rebounded. It wasn't strange, given her pink skin; it was very easy to attract looks and make people stare. But she noticed the boy's eyes didn't hold disgust, or a kind of weird fascination, or hatred. He was just looking at her with curiosity. So, she didn't feel offended.
She said with a smile, "I'm really ready to get into U.A.! The best hero academy in the world! Can you believe All Might is going to be teaching there too?" She spoke with excitement, trying to draw a response from the boy.
(Suzuki) looked at her one last time before speaking, turning his head back to the window again. The movement was deliberate, almost mechanical.
"I don't like talking much. But yes. I will take that exam to become a hero."
And get money and wealth.
He couldn't say those last parts out loud. But he had to say something in the end. She was a character who might be in the same class as him if he succeeded, and this was a good means of... something. Networking? At the same time, he felt profoundly awkward. In the end, he was so much older than he appeared. To him, talking to teenagers and young children seemed a ridiculous affair. So, for six years, he had spent his time only learning. He hadn't made any friends or had any desire to form any kind of fleeting relationships. He had focused solely on his future heroic career, enhancing his abilities, and understanding technology, mechanics, and the support gear used by heroes. All so he could make some things that might help him become a hero.
This kind of behaviour, to others, might have seemed like it came from an arrogant person. But (Mina) noticed the voice the boy possessed was a shy, quiet one. So, she smiled and thought, (He seems embarrassed. That's kinda nice.)
(Mina) wasn't a person who judged others quickly. She had an ability to sense bad people and good people. So, she knew the boy in front of her didn't hate her; he was just thinking about something important. So, she stayed quiet and stared at him a little.
At the same time, after a few seconds, she couldn't bear the silence and started talking again.
The boy didn't respond, but she began saying a lot of things. She talked about the different heroes she was excited to maybe meet, about the written exam she was nervous for, about how cool the U.A. campus looked in the brochures. Her words were a cheerful, bubbling stream filling the space between their seats.
For (Suzuki), her voice was... refreshing. In the end, he hadn't spoken with many people besides his grandmother, his tutors, and also the officials from the Ministry of Education. After he had managed to prove his 'capability'—a carefully curated portfolio of his support gear designs and theoretical tactical papers—he had secured a recommendation to take the U.A. entrance exam. Of course, that had been difficult. He'd needed six years to create some decent equipment just to prove he could perform well in the practical.
Now, all that remained was to actually go to the exam and take it.
As for the written exam, he wasn't worried. He wasn't a genius, but after six years of preparation, it was impossible for him to fail the written test. Everything he was focusing on now was the practical exam and earning the points that would allow him to successfully join the Hero Course.
The bus's intercom crackled to life with a polite, robotic female voice. "Next stop: U.A. High School. Please prepare to disembark."
A collective rustle swept through the bus, a wave of nervous energy palpable enough to taste, like static electricity on the tongue. (Suzuki) stood up, slinging his heavy backpack over one shoulder with a practiced heave. The contents shifted with a series of soft clacks and whirrs.
(Mina) bounced to her feet beside him, her yellow eyes gleaming. "This is it! Good luck... um..."
"(Saito)," he supplied tersely, not looking at her as he moved towards the door. "(Suzuki Saito)."
"Good luck, (Saito)-kun!" she chirped, undeterred by his brevity. "I'm (Ashido Mina)! See you inside, maybe!"
He gave a nod so slight it was almost imperceptible, a mere dip of his chin. The bus doors hissed open with a sound like a sigh, revealing the imposing, sweeping gates of U.A. Academy, gleaming in the morning sun. A monument to hope, power, and everything he was trying to force his way into with nothing but grit, stolen time, and a backpack full of gadgets.
He stepped off the bus, the concrete of the sidewalk solid and real beneath his feet. The buzz of hundreds of hopeful, Quirk-powered applicants surrounded him, a cacophony of excited chatter, nervous laughter, and the occasional pop or fizz of an uncontrolled ability.
(Mina) skipped past him, already chatting with another girl with large, dupli-arms.
(Suzuki Saito) took a deep breath, the air smelling of cut grass, ambition, and ozone.
Showtime.
He adjusted the strap of his backpack, feeling the familiar, comforting weight of his homemade potential, and walked forward into the shadow of the giant H-shaped building, a single, determined cog rolling towards the world's most powerful machine.
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End of Chapter.
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What did you think of our socially-awkward inventor and his pink, bubbly bus-mate? Will his gadgets be enough, or is he heading for a reality check? Let me know your predictions and thoughts in the comments below!