Five days.
That's all the time we had.
Five days to become something more than broken fighters and scattered teams. Five days to turn desperation into strategy. To turn pain into power.
To survive what came next.
And Shira wasn't wasting a second.
Day One – Break the Body
"Move faster or fall behind!"
Shira's voice cracked like a whip through the training yard.
The base had been restructured overnight into something more brutal—obstacle courses rigged with collapsing walls, shock fields, and simulated Nomu attacks. Drones hovered with motion sensors. Fault-triggered traps activated with a misstep.
Lexi hit the ground, groaning, her side bruised from a fall. Kyu reached to help her up—but got shocked by a nearby pole and staggered back with a yelp.
"No helping. On your feet or out," Shira snapped, arms folded.
Across the field, Reaper flipped over a collapsing platform and sprinted forward with inhuman calm. Avis wasn't far behind, flames licking at her boots as she vaulted through a heat tunnel.
Simon grunted as he dragged a weight-vested mannequin up a cliff wall, the cord cutting into his palms.
This wasn't just training.
It was a purge.
Every weakness. Every flaw. Every excuse.
Shira tore it out of us one grueling exercise at a time.
And then—just when most of us were gasping for air—he arrived.
A portal shimmered open behind the command deck. Shira didn't even turn.
"About time," she muttered.
A figure stepped through, scarf whipping in the wind. The yellow goggles and permanent scowl were unmistakable.
Aizawa Shota. Eraserhead.
"Hope you didn't go soft playing babysitter," Shira called without looking up.
He snorted. "Hope you didn't burn them out before I started."
Day Two – Strip the Ego
"Your quirks are not your power."
Aizawa's voice was cold. Flat. Unimpressed.
"They're tools. Extensions. But if you rely on them, you die."
He deactivated several quirks with a blink—Kyu's vision flickered, Lexi dropped mid-spiral, Simon collapsed mid-flight. No warning. No time.
We were blind, raw, exposed.
And that was the point.
"You fight with your brain, your instincts, your fists. Your quirk comes after. Get up."
He ran us through brutal ground combat drills. Hours on end. No quirks. No powers. Just grit. Endurance. Control. When you fell, you got up. If you stayed down, he left you there.
Takai vomited after a sparring session with Reaper.
Jiax passed out and had to be dragged into the shade.
Even I was starting to feel it. My enhanced cells repaired fast—but that didn't mean I didn't feel pain. My body burned. Bones ached.
Shira watched it all without sympathy.
"You want to survive?" she barked. "You want to protect each other? Then break yourselves now. Because the war won't wait."
Day Three – Break the Mind
Shira called it "psych resilience."
But it was more like mental warfare.
Simulated scenarios were fed into our visors—real battles, real casualties. Memories. Failures. The faces of people we couldn't save. Screams that weren't fake.
I saw Bakugo.
Bloodied. Buried.
I saw Izuku, falling into darkness.
I heard my father's voice echo from a memory I'd buried.
"You're not enough."
My hands trembled.
"Focus!" Aizawa barked. "Control the emotion, don't let it control you!"
Kyu froze during her sim—forced to relive losing her sister. Lexi crumpled to her knees when she saw a version of herself failing to protect Team Diamonds.
"You think trauma makes you strong?" Shira snapped. "It doesn't. What you do with it makes you strong."
It wasn't about breaking us to destroy us.
It was about remaking us.
Day Four – Build the Beast
By now, we moved in perfect sync.
Our bruises had bruises. Muscles screamed. But our footwork was sharper. Coordination smoother. Reactions quicker.
We drilled the toxin strategy again and again—target, inject, retreat. We worked in trios, cycling roles between attacker, distractor, and support. Speed mattered. So did timing.
A single mistake meant the Nomu adapted.
Jiax figured out how to use sound disruptions to stagger them.
Avis learned to cloak her flame's heat signature.
Simon used condensed storm clouds to track airborne Nomu.
And I…
I learned to trust them again.
I wasn't the lone weapon anymore.
I was the tip of the spear—but they were the force behind it.
Day Five – The Oath
We stood in the war chamber.
Dirty. Sore. Scarred.
But unbroken.
A hologram of the city flickered in front of us—updated with enemy movement, Nomu nests, evacuation statuses. The plan was solid. The execution? That was on us now.
Shira walked down the line, looking each of us in the eye.
"You're ready," she said.
Aizawa stood at her side, arms crossed. "Barely. But enough."
We all smirked.
"Tomorrow," I said, stepping forward. "We go to war. Together."
Reaper drew a line in the dust with his blade.
"Then let's bring hell with us."