Chapter 2: Musutafu and the Art of Doing Nothing
The international flight to Japan was uneventful, mostly because Kido slept through the entire thing with his mouth wide open, drooling on the complimentary neck pillow.
Landing at Narita International Airport was a shock to the system. Compared to the chaotic energy of Shanghai, everything here felt ordered, quieter. People stood in neat lines. The air smelled different—less cooking oil, more sea salt and damp asphalt.
Navigating customs was a miracle Kido achieved solely by following the people who looked like they knew where they were going, and nodding enthusiastically whenever a uniformed official spoke to him.
By the time he reached Musutafu City via the high-speed train, the sun was already setting. He stood outside the station, holding a wrinkled piece of paper with an address scrawled on it in his mother's handwriting.
"Okay," Kido muttered to himself, rotating the paper. "District 4, 2-Chome... Apartment 304. Easy peasy."
He looked up at the street sign. It was entirely in Japanese Kanji. He could speak Japanese okay, thanks to his parents, but reading it? Kanji were tricky. They had too many little strokes and looked angry.
"That symbol looks like a 'Tree'," Kido reasoned, pointing confidently at a sign on a large stone building that definitely said 'Municipal Bank'. "Trees mean nature. My aunt likes flowers. This must be the way."
It took him three and a half hours to find an apartment building that was only a fifteen-minute straight walk from the station.
When he finally knocked wearily on the door of Apartment 304, it swung open almost immediately to reveal a woman who looked like an older, slightly terrifying version of Kido. Aunt Harumi had the same fiery red hair, though hers was tied back in a severe, no-nonsense bun, and her eyes were a darker, deeper shade of crimson. She held a soup ladle like a riot baton.
"You're late," she said, tapping a finger on her wristwatch. "The train landed hours ago. Did you get lost?"
"I took the scenic route," Kido lied badly, trying to drag his massive suitcase inside past her. "To appreciate the local architecture. Very... boxy."
"You got lost," Harumi concluded dryly, stepping aside to let him in. "Shoes off in the genkan. Wash your hands. Dinner is in ten minutes."
The apartment was small but cozy, and it felt like walking into a greenhouse. Harumi's quirk allowed her to accelerate and manipulate plant growth, which meant her living room was a dense jungle of ferns, flowering vines, and potted plants that seemed to vibrate slightly with life. Kido liked it immediately. It smelled like wet earth and green things.
He settled into the guest room, which was shockingly empty compared to the rest of the house. Just a futon bed, a small desk, and a window overlooking the street.
"I'll fill it up," Kido said to the empty room, dropping his bag. "With cool stuff. Maybe a sword. Do heroes use swords in Japan? I should get a sword."
Dinner was a revelation. Harumi had prepared a massive pot of Sukiyaki to welcome him. Thinly sliced beef, tofu, mushrooms, and vegetables simmered in a sweet and savory soy broth at the center of the table. Kido's eyes watered with pure joy.
"So," Harumi said, watching him eat with the ferocity of a starving wolf that hadn't seen food in a week. "U.A. High."
"Mmph," Kido nodded enthusiastically, swallowing a massive piece of beef without chewing nearly enough.
"It is not a playground, Kido," Harumi said sternly, setting down her chopsticks. "It is the gold standard. The acceptance rate for the hero course is less than one percent annually. The written exam alone filters out thousands of hopefuls before they even get to show off their quirks."
Kido froze, a piece of tofu hovering precariously mid-air. "Written exam?"
Harumi sighed, a long suffering sound, and rubbed her temples. "Yes, Kido. Schools have tests. With paper. And pencils. And math."
"I thought I just had to punch a giant robot or race someone," Kido said, his voice shrinking into a squeak. "I'm really good at racing. Not so good at the math."
"You have ten months before the entrance exam," Harumi declared, her eyes narrowing into combat mode. "We are going to stick to a rigid schedule. Physical training in the morning to keep your quirk peak. Intensive studying in the evening. I will not have my nephew flunk out of U.A. before he even enters because he doesn't know the difference between a quadratic equation and a metaphor."
"Metaphors are the ones with 'like' or 'as', right?" Kido ventured hopefully.
"That is a simile."
"Blast it. Stupid words."
The next few months were a blur, but not the fun, fast kind of blur Kido created with his quirk. This was a slow, painful blur of endless flashcards, grueling morning jogs, and Harumi hitting him on the back of the head with a rolled-up newspaper whenever he got a history question wrong.
But Kido also spent time exploring Musutafu on his own. He found a massive beach park that was currently a dump filled with trash—apparently, some green-haired kid was trying to clean it up, but there were still plenty of old tires and rusted appliances for Kido to jump over during his runs.
He practiced his quirk in secret, early in the mornings before Harumi woke up, going to a secluded riverside path hidden by high embankments.
Velocity Shift: First Gear.
The world didn't change much at this speed, but his interaction with it did. He moved at the speed of a high-end sports car. The faint orange shadows trailed him as he practiced tight cornering on the slick grass. He needed to be precise. If he was going to be a hero, he couldn't just run fast in a straight line; he had to build things, save things, move around fragile people without turning them into paste.
He practiced tying complex knots at high speed. He practiced stacking river stones into towers before gravity could topple them.
Click. Stop.
The recoil hit. He had pushed a ten-second burst. Kido stood by the river, swaying slightly, staring blankly at a duck floating on the water.
He hated this part. It felt like his brain was a high-performance engine that overheated instantly upon use. Every second of super-speed borrowed computing power from his future consciousness, and the debt collector was brutal.
Duck, his brain thought sluggishly. Quack sound. Yellow feet. Why are feet orange? Am I orange?
Five seconds passed. The fog cleared. His brain rebooted.
"Okay," Kido panted, wiping sweat from his forehead. "Recovery time is stable. Ten seconds of First Gear means five seconds of being a drooling idiot. I need to get that ratio down."
He knew, deep down, he couldn't actually change the ratio. It was the fundamental constraint of his quirk. The only solution was to be so overwhelmingly effective in those ten seconds of clarity that the five seconds of vulnerability didn't matter.
Months bled into seasons. The cherry blossoms bloomed pink and white across the city, then fell like snow. The humid heat of Japanese summer rolled in, making his training even harder.
Finally, the day arrived. February 26th. The U.A. High School Entrance Exam.
Kido stood at the towering main gates of the massive H-shaped campus. It was intimidating. The vast glass windows reflected the blue sky, making the building look like a fortress built of dreams and budget. Hundreds of other students were streaming in, a sea of different uniforms, all looking nervous, determined, or terrified.
He saw a kid with messy green hair trip over his own feet and almost face-plant before a nice girl caught him. He saw a tall guy with glasses stiffly scolding the green-haired kid for being clumsy. He saw an angry-looking blonde guy with spiky hair who looked like he wanted to murder the sidewalk just for existing.
Kido adjusted the straps of his yellow backpack. He wore a simple green tracksuit he'd bought at a discount store because he figured it was aerodynamic.
"Okay, Kido," he whispered to himself, bouncing on the balls of his feet. "Plan A: Pass the written exam by some miracle and Aunt Harumi's threats. Plan B: Run really, really fast in the practical."
He took a step forward, feeling the familiar hum of excitement in his veins. He knew he wasn't the smartest guy here. He probably wasn't the strongest. But he was willing to bet everything he had on one simple fact.
When the clock started ticking, nobody in this entire school would be able to catch him.
He walked through the gate, the orange morning sun reflecting in his eyes, matching the fire that burned within them.
"Excuse me!" a loud, stiff voice shouted from behind him. It was the tall boy with glasses and engine mufflers sticking out of his calves. "You are blocking the optimal flow of pedestrian traffic! Please proceed in an orderly fashion to the orientation hall!"
Kido turned and grinned, a wide, toothy, goofy grin that disarmed the uptight boy.
"Sorry, Engine-legs! Just admiring the view. Big school, huh?"
"It is Iida Tenya! And this is a serious institution requiring serious demeanor!"
"Right, right. Serious face on." Kido gave him a thumbs-up, not changing his expression at all. "Good luck, Iida. Don't overheat your engines."
Kido turned and jogged toward the main building entrance, leaving a confused and sputtering Iida behind.
The written exam in the morning was a nightmare, as expected. Kido answered the questions he knew (about 40%), guessed wildly on the ones he didn't (the rest), and spent the last ten minutes drawing a detailed flip-book animation of a cat running on the corner of his answer sheet.
But then came the afternoon. The Practical Exam.
Kido stood in front of the massive, towering industrial gates of Battle Center B. He stretched his arms high above his head, hearing his shoulder joints pop. The crowd of examinees around him was murmuring nervously about robots, point allocations, and complex strategies.
Kido didn't have a strategy. He didn't know which robots were worth what points, and he didn't care. He just knew the objective.
The loud Pro Hero, Present Mic, was up in a surveillance tower, his amplified voice booming across the grounds, shouting something about there being no countdowns in real battles.
"START!"
The hundreds of other examinees hesitated. They were processing the command, their brains clicking into gear.
But Kido? Kido didn't process. Kido just moved.
Click.
Velocity Shift: Fourth Gear.
Before anyone else had taken a single step forward, a streak of fiery orange light tore through the open gate with the force of a gale-force wind. The pressure knocked the hat off a nearby student.
By the time the other students realized the exam had actually started, the orange streak was already deep inside the replica city.
And the first robot was already exploding in a shower of sparks and metal.
Kido skidded to a halt in the middle of a fake street, the orange shadows fading from his limbs, a smoking piece of scrap metal gripped in his hand.
Recoil hitting in 3... 2...
He shook his head violently, fighting the incoming mental fog. He had to keep moving. He had to be faster than the stupidity chasing him down.
"Alright," Kido grinned crookedly, his eyes sliding out of focus for a microsecond before snapping back as he spotted a trio of One-Pointer robots rolling around the corner on tank treads. "Let's dance, garbage cans."