Hiding The Pain || MonoShin [BOOK 1]

Chapter 2 - Assessment Test

"Everyone will be having a battle royale match." he started, looking up at them. Small whispers could be heard from the group of students.

"Against me."

...............................................

They all looked, horrified, at their teacher. The same things were running through their heads. 'Battle royale? Against Vlad-sensei?'

The teacher cleared his throat, shaking them from their thoughts. "But Vlad-sensei! Are you asking us to fight you?"

"Exactly what I mean Tetsutetsu." their teacher deadpanned, an unusually monotonous edge was added to his voice. "Monoma and Shishida fought me during the final exams, and there was no sign of hesitancy there."

"But Vlad-sensei, that was just Monoma and Shishida! This is all 20 of us!"

"Let me ask you something Tetsutetsu." Their teacher's voice seemed to drop an octave, and his grim look, with his menacing physique, could scare anyone, maybe even intimidate Endeavour a little bit.

"Are you afraid of hurting me, or are you afraid of getting hurt by me?"

To that question, it seemed the silver haired boy could not provide an answer, not even the crazy, stupid, not thought through answers he could give at times. When the utter silence became too unbearable, Monoma had to talk, had to do something  to ease the fear creeping up his back. The fear that everyone would pass the test while he didn't, the fear of not being able to do anything while one of his fellow classmates was injured, the fear of not being able to live up to his father's expectations, the fear of-

"Sir, how will you be recording our scores?" Kendo asked, hand already in the air.

"Everyone will be holding one roll of this capture tape." He held the small tool in his hands. "Once it touches you, you're out. The last person standing gets the top spot and I will take care of cleaning the classroom. However, if I win, all of you will stay back for cleaning duty after school. Another thing, no teamwork! This is meant to look at specific skills you've added to your quirk this time we've been away. So, you can fight your classmates, but no teamwork. I'll see if we can do a teamwork exercise sometime in the future."

No teamwork. Just great. The fact that his quirk just relied on other people to function was both a great advantage and horrible disadvantage, depending on the situation. In this setting, it was a horrible disadvantage. As everyone moved to Ground Beta to get ready, Monoma went along with them, thoughts spiraling out of control. He knew he had worked on his physical strength, but it wouldn't be very effective against Vlad King. Not alone that is. He searched his classmates for one that could help him, and he was leaning more toward Tetsutetsu. The guy's quirk would be great for defending himself against one of Vlad-sensei's attacks, and the quirk did make Tetsutetsu stronger. His quirk didn't allow him to fully master the limit of anyone's quirk, not without practice really, but he had used Tetsutetsu's quirk a few times, and had reached the more-than-a-beginner-but-not-quite-an-expert stage with it. He could also copy Vlad King's quirk, but that was way more risky. He had seen him use it several times, but never asked to copy it, so he had zero experience with it. He wouldn't exactly be able to beat Vlad King at his own game if he was not very good at said game. Another risk was touching Vlad King to get the quirk. Vlad King certainly would be on mainly defense but use counterattacks, to try and get them out of the game. It would be a wise call, and he could probably use it to get to Vlad King. But with the added variables of his classmates, Neito wasn't sure whether he would end up copying someone else's quirk instead.