Colors in the Dark

[22] Endurance Training- Pool Style!

A long, loud ringing jolted Ayami awake. She was splayed across her bed under the thin blanket she had, and it turned out her phone was the thing that made the horrid ringing, complete with a vibration. Turns out it was from Midoriya, on a class group chat, inviting everyone to go to the school pool for training, though they could only stay until 5 pm.

Ayami typed a quick reply and went to get ready. She vaguely remembered the girls talking about going down to the pools that day while they were shopping, but Ayami had been too busy looking around in the store to add anything to the conversation.

In the bathroom, the redhead cleaned her face with cold water, changing into the school-issued swimsuit that thankfully covered the scars on her torso before throwing a black t-shirt with red and white roses and jean shorts over it, then reluctantly slipped a pair of shoes on.

Ayami tucked her phone and school ID into her shorts pocket before grabbing her backpack and putting a towel and spare clothes inside, along with some hair ties. She left the apartment after double-checking to make sure she had everything, then left for the school.

One she made it to UA, she quickly found her way to the locker room with the other girls. There, she took her cover-up shirt and shorts off and put them in her bag. Tsu greeted her. "Ribbit! Hey Ayami, you came to the pool as well?"

"Yeah, Midoriya invited everyone for endurance training," she told the frog girl as Tooru and Kyouka appeared in their suits as well. "Figured one last day would be good before heading off to camp; I don't usually get out of the house for fun so it was a nice change of pace."

"The boys'll be here, too?" Kyouka asked from behind Ayami. "If you hadn't said Midoriya invited you, I would have assumed Mineta was just looking for a way to see us in exposing clothes."

"Good thing we have these things!" Tooru exclaimed as Ayami spun around, though she could only see the girl's swimsuit, unable to tell if she was trying to point to them or not.

Momo nodded, changed as well. "Much better than staying cooped up in our houses the whole summer." Ayami pulled her hair tie from her bag, trying to pin her hair out of her face, but the ginger locks continued to evade her. Momo stifled a laugh and came up beside her. "Here, want me to help?"

Ayami sighed in relief. "Yes please, Momo." She took it the dark-haired motherly girl knew full well that her redhead classmate hadn't had much experience with putting her hair up, let alone trying to make it look nice. Momo took the ponytail around her wrist and began to separate the messy ginger strands of hair into three distinct sections before twisting them expertly around one another, trying her best not to pull.

"There you go, Ayami," she said once the braid was complete and tied off at the end, admiring it for a moment before turning to the rest of the 1-A girls, who were already walking out. "Come on; let's not be late."

Ayami nodded as she jogged after them, all walking out to the pool. She and the other girls began to stretch in preparation, and it wasn't soon after that the boys appeared in their own school-issued swimsuits. Apparently, Midoriya had invited everyone else in class, or at least they all had the same idea, because soon the whole pool area was filled with 19 of their 21 classmates.

Mineta and Kaminari had raced in together, ready to oogle the girls, but the latter seemed bleakly disappointed, and Ayami could hear one of them say "bikini" before she tuned them out. Even so, Mineta's gaze still seemed to stick to them, causing the ginger to shudder and avert her own gaze from the short pervert.

Either way, Iida welcomed them all, wearing his swimsuit alongside goggles and a swim-cap. He was definitely the type to always go above and beyond (or just Plus Ultra!) and this was no exception. He began coaching the boys on swim laps as the girls started a game of water polo, which was sort of like a game of volleyball played in the pool.