Morning air was crisp when Fern arrived at UA's gates.
She'd left early (thirty minutes before necessary) because crowds made observation difficult. Better to watch others arrive than be watched arriving.
The campus was massive. Multiple buildings spread across manicured grounds, each designed for specific training purposes. The main academic building loomed ahead, all glass and steel and architectural ambition.
Impressive. Wasteful, but impressive.
Other students began trickling in.
She recognized faces from the entrance exam.
The explosive blonde boy, Bakugo, according to overheard conversations.
The green-haired mutterer, Midoriya.
The frog girl, Tsu.
The brown-haired girl she'd saved, Uraraka.
Uraraka spotted her and waved enthusiastically. "Fern! Hi! We're in the same class!"
Fern nodded politely. "Hello."
"I never got to properly thank you! You totally saved me during the exam! Your quirk is so cool! How does it work? Can you suppress any energy or just certain types? Does it hurt? Can you—"
"It's complicated," Fern interrupted. "And we should find our classroom."
Class 1-A was on the first floor. The door was enormous, easily three meters tall. Designed for students with mutation quirks, Fern realized. Everything here was built to accommodate abnormal biology.
She slid the door open and entered.
The classroom was already half-full. Students clustered in groups, chatting nervously. Bakugo sat alone, feet on his desk, glaring at nothing. Midoriya was scribbling furiously in a notebook.
Fern chose a seat in the middle, not front row where teachers focused attention, not back row where troublemakers gathered. Middle was forgettable.
She sat, placed her bag down, and waited.
More students filtered in.
A boy with engines in his legs who immediately began lecturing about proper desk posture. A girl with earphone jacks dangling from her earlobes who looked perpetually bored. Todoroki entered last, his heterochromatic eyes scanning the room once before he took a seat by the window.
Then the door opened again.
A man in a yellow sleeping bag wriggled through, dropped to the floor, and spoke from inside the cocoon.
"It took eight seconds for you to quiet down. That's not going to work."
The class fell silent.
"I'm Aizawa Shota, your homeroom teacher." He emerged partially from the sleeping bag; disheveled black hair, exhausted eyes. "First thing: put these on and meet me outside."
He tossed a stack of gym uniforms onto a desk.
"We're doing a quirk assessment test."
Excited murmurs rippled through the class.
"A test? On the first day?" Uraraka asked.
"UA is about pushing beyond your limits," Aizawa said flatly. "I need to know your baseline capabilities. Anyone who doesn't take this seriously will be expelled immediately."
The room went dead quiet.
"You have five minutes. Move."
***
The testing field was standard athletic grounds with measurement equipment.
Twenty students lined up in their gym uniforms. Fern assessed her classmates properly for the first time. Mutation types were obvious; Tsu, the boy with a tail, the girl with pink skin. Others were harder to categorize.
Aizawa held up a device. "You've all done fitness tests before. This is the same, except you can use your quirks. We'll start with the fifty-meter dash."
He called names alphabetically.
Aoyama Yuga went first; naval laser quirk that propelled him forward. Decent time.
Ashido Mina used acid to reduce friction somehow. Creative.
Asui Tsuyu simply... jumped the entire distance in two bounds. Frog physiology.
When Bakugo's turn came, he launched himself with explosions, crossing in just over three seconds. Show-off.
"Hayashi Fern."
Fern stepped to the starting line.
How much should I show?
She couldn't use body enhancement, that would raise questions about why a "suppression quirk" included physical augmentation. But she also couldn't be slow. That would flag her as weak, draw different kinds of attention.
She ran. Fast, but not impossibly so. Seven seconds flat.
Respectable. Yet forgettable.
Aizawa's eyes tracked her the entire time.
The tests continued.
Grip strength: Fern scored average. Standing long jump: slightly above average. Sustained sideways jumps: exactly average.
Every result carefully calibrated.
Then came the ball throw.
"Use your quirk however you want," Aizawa explained. "Just get the ball as far as possible."
Uraraka went first. She touched the ball, negated its gravity, and sent it into low orbit. "Infinity" appeared on the measurement device.
The class cheered.
Bakugo went next. He launched the ball with an explosion powerful enough to rattle windows. 705.2 meters.
"YEAH!" he roared. "Beat that, extras!"
Others took their turns. Fire quirks, ice quirks, strength quirks. Each student showing off what made them special.
"Hayashi Fern."
She stepped up, took the ball.
Suppression quirk. How would that help throw a ball?
She couldn't. Not obviously. A suppression quirk user should struggle with this test.
But showing complete weakness was also problematic.
She threw the ball. Hard.
42.7 meters.
Pathetic by UA standards.
She returned to the line, ignoring Bakugo's snort of derision.
Aizawa was watching her again. His expression revealed nothing.
The final test was endurance running. 1500 meters.
Fern ran it in exactly six minutes. Precisely average.
When all tests concluded, Aizawa displayed the rankings on a screen.
Fern placed fourteenth out of twenty.
Perfectly mediocre.
"These are your current capabilities," Aizawa said. "Some of you are naturally strong. Others are weak. If you want to survive at UA, you'll need to improve."
He paused, scanning the class.
"I lied earlier. No one's getting expelled today. But don't get comfortable. This was just a baseline. The real training starts tomorrow."
The class relaxed visibly.
Fern didn't. She'd felt Aizawa's attention on her throughout every test. He was evaluating something beyond quirk performance.
He suspects something.
***
Back in the classroom, Aizawa gave final instructions.
"Review the curriculum packet. Tomorrow we start combat training with All Might. Bring your hero costumes, they should arrive tonight. Dismissed."
Students filed out excitedly. Fern gathered her things slowly, letting others leave first.
"Hayashi."
She paused. Aizawa was at his desk, not looking at her.
"Your entrance exam footage showed interesting capabilities. But today you performed... average."
Fern kept her expression neutral. "The tests didn't suit my quirk."
"A suppression quirk struggles with athletics. Makes sense." He finally looked at her. "But you stopped a zero-pointer. That requires significant power output. Yet your stamina test shows you're barely above civilian level."
"Stopping something doesn't require stamina," Fern said carefully. "Just focus."
"Hmm." Aizawa pulled out eye drops, applied them. "I'll be watching your development closely. All students here have potential. I need to understand yours."
"Understood, sensei."
"One more thing." He stood, gathering his sleeping bag. "If you're hiding something dangerous, I'll find out. If you're hiding something benign, I'll still find out. Either way, secrets don't last long at UA."
Fern met his exhausted gaze. "I'm not hiding anything dangerous."
"Good. Because if you were, my quirk would handle it." He walked past her to the door. "Erasure. I can nullify quirks just by looking at someone. Useful for dealing with problem students."
He left.
Fern stood alone in the empty classroom.
He can erase quirks. But not magic.
That was important information. If Aizawa used his quirk on her and her abilities didn't disappear, it would confirm she wasn't a normal quirk user.
Which meant she needed to be very, very careful about when and how she used her power around him.
This is going to be complicated.
***
That evening, Fern's apartment.
The hero costume package arrived as promised. She opened it on her bedroom floor.
Black combat suit with minimal armor plating. Dark green accents. Practical, not flashy. She'd designed it to match her quirk's supposed function; suppression meant subtlety, not spectacle.
There was also a note from the support department:
"Per your specifications: lightweight, flexible, minimal quirk signature interference. Note: costume includes impact padding but is not rated for high-velocity collisions. Please exercise caution during combat training."
Fern held up the costume. It looked professional. Heroic, even.
Tomorrow is combat training. Against other students. With All Might watching.
All Might. The Symbol of Peace. The strongest hero in Japan, possibly the world. She'd seen him on television countless times; always smiling, always confident, always winning.
What would he think of her performance?
More importantly, what would she reveal during combat?
Fighting other students meant adapting to quirks in real-time. It meant showing tactical thinking. Reaction speed. Combat experience.
All things she had in abundance.
All things a fifteen-year-old shouldn't have.
I'll need to hold back. Fight like a trained teenager, not a war veteran.
She folded the costume and set it aside.
Her phone buzzed. Message from Yuki:
"How was your first day?! Tell us everything!"
Fern typed back: "Fine. Combat training tomorrow."
"Exciting! Be careful! Call if you need anything!"
She set the phone down and lay back on her bed, staring at the ceiling.
In her old life, the first day of adventuring had been terrifying. She'd been young, inexperienced, thrust into a world of demons and magic she barely understood.
Frieren-sama had been patient. Stern, but patient. Teaching her to observe before acting, to think before casting, to survive before trying to win.
What would Frieren do here?
Probably observe. Gather information. Avoid making waves.
But Frieren had also been a thousand-year-old archmage who could afford patience. Fern was pretending to be a fifteen-year-old quirk user in an institution designed to expose weaknesses.
Different situation, so use different approach.
She closed her eyes, reaching for the magic inside her. It hummed quietly, waiting. Eleven years in this body hadn't diminished it; if anything, it felt stronger, more refined.
But using it was dangerous. Every spell was a risk. Every display of power a question she couldn't fully answer.
Tomorrow I fight students who've been training with their quirks their whole lives. I need to look competent but not exceptional. Skilled but not experienced.
I need to be someone I'm not.
Again.
Fern opened her eyes and sat up. Enough dwelling. She needed rest.
A mage pretending to be a quirk user in a world that doesn't believe in magic.
Simple.
She almost laughed at the absurdity.
Instead, she turned off the light and went to sleep, knowing that when morning came, everything would change.
One way or another.
***
Meanwhile - UA Faculty Office
Aizawa reviewed the day's data on his tablet.
Hayashi Fern's performance had been calculated. Every test result hovering around average except where her quirk naturally excelled; the grip strength test where she'd scored slightly higher, possibly from quirk-enhanced control.
But her stamina was wrong. Her reaction times were wrong. Her movement efficiency was wrong.
She moved like someone conserving energy during a long operation. Like a soldier pacing themselves for extended conflict.
Not like a teenager taking fitness tests.
He pulled up the entrance exam footage again. Watched her stop the zero-pointer for the hundredth time.
Calm execution.
His phone buzzed. Message from Nezu:
"Initial observations?"
Aizawa typed: "She's hiding her capabilities. Deliberately scoring average on tests that don't require quirk use. Athletic ability doesn't match entrance exam performance."
"Theory?"
"Either she has a secondary quirk she's not disclosing, or her primary quirk has applications she's not revealing. Possibly both."
"Recommendation?"
Aizawa paused, considering.
"Continue observation. Tomorrow's combat training will be more revealing. She can't hide in a fight."
"Unless she can," Nezu replied. "Some people are very good at hiding."
"Then we push harder."
"Carefully, Aizawa. Remember, if she's dangerous, we need to know before she realizes we know."
The conversation ended.
Aizawa set down his phone and looked at his class roster. Twenty names. Twenty potential heroes. And one potential unknown.
What are you hiding, Hayashi Fern?
Tomorrow, he'd start finding out.
END CHAPTER 5