Now that they were back in the real world, the students left one by one for their own homes since they still had to return to school the next day. Gray, on the other hand, spent the next 66 hours doing his normal routines. He would spend most of his time with Eri. Thanks to all the sessions she had with Hannibal inside the training dimension, she seemed more outgoing than before, and Gray was deeply grateful.
Of course, Gray didn't let his passive gold generation sit idle. Once he had enough gold, he would buy the next upgrade or a few multipliers to make the next upgrade take less and less time. Now it was Wednesday, a little after 1:00 PM, and Class 1-A was on the way to the USJ. Gray already knew what awaited them there. Before the kids could start their classes, the villains would attack the place... that is, of course, if the timeline hadn't changed with his intervention. The villain group had still infiltrated UA and stolen the class itinerary, so he hoped they'd attack. Maybe that intense training session the kids had would show its results today.
Glancing to the side, Gray opened his Status Info.
[Status Info]
Name: Gray Ashwood
Age: 23 years old
Race: Saiyan
Gold: 29,984,648
Gold per hour: 51,196,926 (25,598,463)
Gold Multiplier: 2.00x
Time: 1:05 PM
He had just bought two multipliers a few minutes ago to bring his total multiplier to a clean 2.00x.
Closing the interface, Gray kept looking out the bus window with Eri by his side. Next to Eri, though, Mirko was also sitting down. Apparently, after the training dimension had taken them out, Mirko made up her mind and finally moved her hero work closer to the school. She had spent a few hours a day barging straight into Gray's room to spend time with Eri and him. The time spent with him was, of course, used in the training facility within UA. When she wasn't out patrolling, she spent her time at UA trying to spar with Gray as much as she could. Gray, of course, let it happen; he had more free time than he knew what to do with, so sparring kept him occupied.
The bus rolled smoothly down the highway, the energetic chatter of Class 1-A echoing through the cabin as the kids discussed their Quirks and uniforms. They felt lighter, faster, and far more confident than they ever had before entering the Training Dimension.
Up at the front of the bus, Aizawa sat quietly, keeping a close eye on the highway as the giant dome of the Unforeseen Simulation Joint finally appeared in the distance. The stage was set, and the real-world trial was about to begin.
Once the bus parked and everyone got off, someone was already waiting for them at the entrance. It was the Space Hero, Thirteen. She wore her signature white astronaut suit, and her voice sounded slightly distorted through her helmet when she spoke.
"Welcome, everyone! I have been awaiting your arrival!" Thirteen spoke grandly to the class. "This is a facility designed to train future heroes in all manner of rescue operations, disasters, and accidents! It is called the Unforeseen Simulation Joint, or USJ for short!"
Once the introductions ended, Thirteen turned and opened the facility's massive doors. Inside was a massive space. Gray looked around the structure, taking mental notes on how the layout was built. He planned to run some of the exercises this facility offered, but only inside his training dimension, where he could make the simulations look and feel as real as possible.
Before the rescue classes could even officially start, a strange black swirl suddenly opened up below, near the central fountain. The entire freshman class stared down at the rippling void, half expecting it to be some sort of surprise pop-quiz exercise the school had organized.
But the illusion shattered the second Aizawa stepped out in front of the crowd.
"Don't move! Stay back!" Aizawa ordered, pulling his capture scarf tight and snapping his yellow goggles over his eyes. "This is not a simulation. Those are actual villains."
A dense crowd of low-level thugs and heavily armed criminals kept pouring out of the massive portal, laughing wickedly as they filled the central plaza.
Mirko, seeing dozens upon dozens of villains pouring out of the warp gate, got incredibly excited. She was tired of getting her ass handed to her every single day when she sparred with Gray inside the gym. But now? Seeing all those fresh, unsuspecting punching bags arrive right at her doorstep to let off some steam, her smile naturally widened into a feral, bloodthirsty grin.
Gray instantly took Eri into his arms and flew up into the air. From there, he could see the first major change in the timeline. Instead of just the one Nomu from the original story, two more of the monstrous, exposed-brain creatures appeared beside it. Gray saw about seventy villains scattered across the main plaza, but he knew many more were hidden around the different disaster zones. He also knew all about Kurogiri and his versatile Warp Gate Quirk, which was precisely why he took Eri up into the sky with him. If that villain had managed to move Eri to one of those dangerous zones, and she ended up getting hurt, Gray would probably lose his mind, go into a blind rage, and end up killing every single villain in the facility. Just thinking about it made Gray shake his head.
Down below, Thirteen had quickly moved to the front to protect the panicked students, her astronaut suit positioned as a shield. Aizawa and Mirko had already dashed forward, leaping straight down the central stairs to start their counterattack against the frontline thugs. After the sensors stopped working and their phones lost signal, Thirteen tried to take all the students and leave the facility through the front doors, only to be stopped dead in her tracks by Kurogiri.
A dense column of dark purple mist exploded right behind the group, blocking the exit. "Nice to meet you. We are the League of Villains," Kurogiri said, his glowing yellow eyes narrowing through the smoke. "It may be presumptuous of us, but we have invited ourselves into the home of heroes in order to have All Might draw his last breath!" He paused, his mist rippling as he scanned the entryway. "We had thought that All Might was supposed to be here today according to the curriculum itinerary, but it seems we were mistaken."
"He had something urgent to do, so the principal sent me instead," Gray said as he floated down casually, his frame hovering just above the students' heads with Eri secured in his arms. He looked straight into Kurogiri's yellow eyes, a smile playing on his lips. "You guys don't mind, do ya?"
"Ah, the anomaly," Kurogiri murmured, his glowing yellow eyes narrowing through the dense violet fog. "It matters not. We had extensive plans for your interference as well, so this doesn't change a single thing about our plans."
"It seems you guys are pretty confident in this little plan of yours," Gray replied casually. He turned his head, his vision easily tracking the chaos unfolding in the main plaza below. He panned across the concrete floor, eyeing the three hulking, exposed-brain monsters already engaged in a high-speed battle with Mirko and Aizawa. "Three Nomus, huh?"
"You really are an enigma," Kurogiri said, his mist rippling with unease. "You possess knowledge you are not supposed to know... Perhaps you have some sort of predictive foresight Quirk?"
While the warp villain was momentarily distracted trying to analyze Gray's background, the Class 1-A students used the time to try to sneak toward the heavy exit doors. But Kurogiri came out of his stupor rather quickly. Realizing the targets were moving, his dark purple fog exploded outward in a massive cloud. "You almost got me monologuing! But it doesn't matter! Our primary objective has not changed!" Kurogiri roared.
He activated his Quirk to its absolute limit, expanding his shadowy gate until it swallowed all twenty students of Class 1-A whole in a fraction of a second. The dark void snapped shut, leaving only Space Hero Thirteen standing at the entrance, with Gray still calmly holding the quiet Eri in his arms high above the main plaza.
"My job was to scatter all of you across this facility!" Kurogiri's voice echoed wickedly through the dome. "You will all die a horrible death at our hands!"
Gray watched his students disappear into the spatial rifts without panicking or showing a single ounce of worry. The specialized teachers and Master Roshi hadn't spent a month breaking those kids' bones inside the Training Dimension for them to drop dead against low-tier street thugs. Instead, he flew higher into the dome's empty air to survey the entire landscape.
He instantly noticed the multiple swirling warp gates popping open simultaneously across the water, fire, and mountain zones, dumping the teenagers directly into the traps. Smiling, Gray amplified his voice with a burst of Ki that thundered through the entire USJ, drowning out the villains' noise.
"To all students! You have my permission to engage in battle!" Gray's voice boomed through every single zone. "Show me the results of your training! Don't hold back!"
"It seems you have some confidence in those kids," Kurogiri said. "But they are facing certain death at the hands of our people."
"I am pretty confident they will be okay," Gray said, smiling. He floated down to the floor and gently handed Eri over to Thirteen. "They trained under me, after all."
Before the warp villain could even register the movement, Gray disappeared from his spot in a flawless blur. He materialized directly next to Kurogiri. Moving with lightning-fast precision, his hand shot out and instantly grabbed the solid metal collar the villain wore around his neck. Gray launched into the air, spun, and hurled the mist-wrapped villain like a rocket straight toward Shigaraki, who was still standing by the central fountain in the plaza.
Down below, Mirko and Aizawa were already tearing through the frontline, systematically taking out at least thirty low-level thugs without breaking a sweat. Shigaraki, seeing his common grunts being decimated, grew irritated and sent the two extra Nomus his Sensei had told him to take along, just in case things got messy. He still held back the primary Nomu, the one specifically engineered to kill All Might, right next to his side. The two extra Nomus dashed forward into the dust, their massive muscles bulging as they engaged in a high-speed battle with the underground hero and the rabbit heroine.
Less than a minute later, Kurogiri crash-landed violently onto the concrete fountain next to Shigaraki, splashing water everywhere and soaking him completely.
"What the hell happened to you, Kurogiri!?" Shigaraki hissed.
"Yikes. You look pretty creepy with all those severed hands wrapped around you," Gray said, casually landing right next to Shigaraki on the wet pavement. He looked over the villain's signature look with a mocking smirk. "But it seems you're missing a dog's paw, aren't you?"
Shigaraki's red eyes widened under his father's hand, his breath hitching as panic hit his chest. "Wha-What the hell are you talking about!?"
"You know what? Never mind," Gray shrugged, casually waving his hand dismissively. He stood right next to Shigaraki as if nothing dangerous was happening around them, completely ignoring the surrounding battlefield. "You don't mind if I stay right here and watch the fights, do you?"
Aizawa was being pushed back by the massive Nomu he was fighting. The creature's raw, mindless strength forced the underground hero to slide a few feet back across the cracked concrete, leaving tread marks as he took a brief moment to catch his breath. Adjusting his yellow goggles, Eraser Head saw that Gray was suddenly next to the enemy, and he called out, "What happened to the students!?"
"They were sent to different places all around the facility," Gray called back casually. "Don't worry. I'm sure they'll be fine."
"And what if they get injured!?" Aizawa hissed, his hair floating as he erased the second Nomu's quirk to assist Mirko.
"Then I can just heal them in a second," Gray shrugged, waving a hand dismissively. "Besides, the last boss is standing right here anyway. If those kids can't handle a few common back-alley thugs, then they'd better think about their future careers and give up on being a hero right now."
"You're not rational enough!" Eraser Head said as he went back to his own fight.
Gray paused, shifting his gaze over to the young man standing next to the fountain. "I wasn't talking about you being the last boss, by the way," Gray added, his tone dripping with mockery. "You're way too weak for a title like that."