The Marked Trajectory

The morning greeted me with a disgustingly good mood. The sun was shining, birds were singing, and somewhere on the other side of Mustafu, Katsuki Bakugo was probably still shaking paper dust out of his school uniform. I walked down the corridor of Aldera Junior High with a faint smile on my face—the kind that appears on someone who knows another person’s shameful secret. I was one of the first to enter the classroom. Izuku was already at his desk, scribbling in a notebook. Seeing me, he looked up and gave a welcoming nod. “Good morning, Seiha-kun. You look... pleased today.” “Morning, Green,” I plopped into my seat. “Just had a good dream.” “What kind?” “Paper.” Izuku blinked, clearly trying to decode my answer, but then the classroom door swung open. Standing in the doorway was Bakugo. He looked... normal. Seriously. No trace of last night’s paper-plane massacre. No dark circles under his eyes, no crumpled uniform, no shreds of paper in his hair. Just the usual Bakugo—a glower, hands in his pockets, shoulders squared. The only thing that set him apart from yesterday was a subtle wariness in his gaze. He wasn’t just looking at the class—he was scanning it. Mentally, I gave him a point for composure. The guy had clearly spent a lot of time getting himself presentable. Respect. Bakugo walked to his desk but paused beside me on the way. Just for a second. He simply stopped, slid his eyes over my face, and moved on. Not a word. No threat. Only that look—heavy, appraising. “What’s with him?” Izuku asked quietly after Bakugo sat down. “No idea,” I shrugged. “Maybe he didn’t get enough sleep.” Inwardly, I smirked. The Mark was still on him; I could feel it distinctly. I wonder if he senses anything? Probably not. Lessons began as usual. I diligently pretended to listen to the teacher while watching Bakugo out of the corner of my eye. He was acting strange. No, he wasn’t flinching at every rustle like I’d fantasised about yesterday, but a certain paranoia had definitely awoken in him. Every time a classmate dropped a pen or rustled a page, his shoulders tensed almost imperceptibly. He glanced at the windows as if expecting paper planes to come crawling through them. And when during the long break someone launched a paper ball across the room, Bakugo blew it up in mid-air before it had travelled half a metre. “Bakugo!” the teacher snapped. “Stop using your Quirk in class!” “It was self-defence,” he ground out. The class froze in bewilderment. Self-defence against a paper ball? I buried my face in my textbook, hiding a smile. Izuku, sitting beside me, glanced at me with clear suspicion. He didn’t know anything, of course, but his analytical brain was already piecing things together: me cheerful from the morning, Bakugo on edge... “Seiha-kun,” he said quietly when the noise died down, “you did something, didn’t you?” “Me?” I put on a mask of wounded innocence. “Green, I was at the children’s home all night, ask anyone.” “That’s not an answer.” “It’s the best answer you’re going to get right now.” Izuku sighed and returned to his notebook. But I caught a flicker of something like understanding in his eyes. Not condemnation—more analytical interest. The kind of “how did he pull that off and can I write it down” look. At the next break, Bakugo approached me himself. It was unexpected. He simply got up from his desk, crossed the classroom, and stopped beside my table. Hands in his pockets, the same heavy, appraising stare. “Orphanage boy.” “Firecracker,” I leaned back in my chair and looked up at him. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” “Where were you last night?” “At the children’s home,” I shrugged. “Did my homework, folded paper planes with the kids.” Just like that. Don’t lie, but don’t tell the whole truth. The best tactic. Bakugo narrowed his eyes. He clearly hadn’t expected such directness. The word “paper planes” made him twitch, but he quickly got a grip on himself. “What kind of paper planes?” “Paper ones. Kids love launching them. We’ve got a whole origami club at the home,” I spoke calmly, with a slight drawl. “Why? Want to join?” “Don’t get cocky,” he bit out. “Then don’t ask stupid questions.” For several seconds we played a staring contest. I didn’t look away. Neither did he. The air between us felt like you could cut it with a knife. The classmates grew quiet and watched the scene with the interest of a theatre audience. Izuku froze with a pen in his hand, ready to intervene at any moment. “I’ll find out who did it,” Bakugo said quietly. “And when I do, they’ll regret it.” “Good luck with the investigation,” I smiled the friendliest smile from my arsenal. “If you need witnesses, I’ve got about ten. They’ll all confirm I was at the children’s home.” He turned and headed for his desk. But on the way, he stopped and tossed over his shoulder: “You’re weird, orphanage boy. Too calm. And your Quirk... you never talk about it. That’s suspicious.” “Do you talk about yours to everyone?” I shot back. Bakugo grunted and sat down. The conversation was over. I exhaled. Seemed like I’d dodged it. But his last words stuck in my head. He was right: I really don’t talk about my Quirk. And that attracts attention just as much as if I were bragging about it on every corner. People sense when something is being hidden from them. Especially paranoid types like Bakugo. Fine. He hasn’t proved anything yet. And the Mark was still on him. Maybe stage a second round in a couple of days? Or better to wait, so as not to raise even more suspicion? I pulled out my phone and typed a quick message to Koji: “Everything’s going according to plan. Firecracker is furious. Details tonight.” The reply came a minute later: “Burn!!!” I put the phone away and exchanged a glance with Izuku. He was looking at me with a “I still don’t know what you did, but I’m already impressed” expression. “Tell me later?” he mouthed. “At the beach,” I mouthed back. Izuku nodded and returned to his notebook. He knew how to wait. That was one of his best qualities.

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In the evening, the usual smells of salt, rust, and someone’s unfulfilled dreams met us at Dagobah Beach. The sun was already slanting toward sunset, painting the mountains of junk orange and pink. I stood by an old refrigerator we used as a target, lazily tossing small pebbles at it. Each one—right on target. Without a miss. Izuku sat on an overturned crate with a thick notebook in his hands. He was sketching something, glancing at me now and then. “Seiha-kun,” he began, “I’ve been thinking...” “Dangerous thing, Green.” “Very funny,” he ignored the jab as usual. “I was thinking about your training. You work so hard on accuracy, on reaction speed, on different tactics. But you don’t record your results at all.” “Why record them?” I tossed a pebble. It traced an arc and smacked right into the centre of the chalk-drawn target. “I can see the progress.” “Seeing is one thing. Systematising is entirely different. Imagine: you want to understand how distance affects a projectile’s final speed. Can you measure that? Yes. But without notes, you’ll rely only on feel. And feel can be deceptive.” I threw another stone. Also on target. “So what are you suggesting?” “A training journal,” Izuku held the notebook out to me. “I sketched out an example. A table: distance to target, projectile type, initial throwing force, any interference, final impact speed. You could also record ricochet angles, hit percentages under different conditions, the efficiency of ‘Sending’ compared to a physical throw...” He got carried away and started muttering. This was the same Izuku who could analyse Quirks for hours without noticing anything around him. I took the notebook and flipped through it. Several pages had already been laid out—neat tables, columns, notes in the margins. “You did all this yesterday?” “Well...” he looked embarrassed. “I thought it could be useful. You train very hard, but without a system you could hit a ceiling. But if you write everything down, you’ll see where you’re growing and where you’re stuck. And you could also track unusual effects. For instance, how a projectile behaves if the Mark is on a moving target that accelerates...” “Wait, wait, wait,” I raised a hand. “You want me to keep a scientific diary of my throws?” “Well... yes?” I sighed. The idea sounded tedious. But deep down, I understood Izuku was right. I was already experimenting with tactics that had never been used with the original Mark-Mark Fruit. If I kept records, I might find patterns I’d otherwise simply miss. “Fine, you’ve convinced me,” I handed the notebook back. “But you’re doing the writing. My handwriting’s like a doctor’s.” Izuku beamed and immediately opened a blank page. “Then let’s start with basic measurements. Distance—ten metres. Projectile—a stone weighing about a hundred grams. Throw—by hand, without ‘Sending’. I’ll time it?” “Go ahead.” We spent about an hour at it. I threw stones, nuts, and chunks of pipe from different distances while Izuku diligently recorded the results. Flight time, impact force, deviation from the target centre. I felt like a lab rat, but I didn’t argue—after all, he was burning with the idea, and I wasn’t against getting structured data. “By the way,” I said when we took a break, “remember you proposed that idea with a conduit?” “A conduit?” “Yeah, to reassign the Mark in mid-air. Say, I place a Mark on a rope, then throw the rope at another target, and the Mark transfers to it?” “Oh, that!” Izuku perked up. “Yes, I remember. It could work if your Quirk recognised the conduit as an extension of your hand. But you said the Mark only overwrites with a bare-handed touch...” “Exactly. But let’s test it.” I found a scrap of rope in the junk pile. I placed a Mark on an old road sign—our main target. Then I took the glove off my left hand and touched the rope, picturing that I wanted to transfer the Mark through it onto a crate lying nearby. I concentrated. Imagined the Mark flowing along the rope’s fibres like a spark along a fuse... Nothing. I threw a stone. It flew toward the road sign, completely ignoring the crate. “Another variant,” I touched the crate with my bare hand, overwriting the Mark, and then tried to use the rope to touch the road sign and transfer the Mark back. Also nothing. The Mark stayed on the crate. “Try a chain,” Izuku suggested. “Maybe metal conducts better?” I found a piece of rusty chain. Same result. The Mark did not transfer through any conduit. Not at all. “Told you it wouldn’t work,” I smirked. “The Quirk is strictly tuned to a bare hand. No conduit can fool it.” “Too bad,” Izuku sighed but immediately brightened. “But that’s a useful result too! Now we know for certain that route is a dead end. We won’t waste any more time on it. Let’s write it down.” He added a new line in the journal: “Experiment No. 1: Transferring the Mark through a conduit. Rope, chain—result negative. The Mark transfers only via direct bare-handed touch.” “You’ve got a real talent for bureaucracy, Green.” “It’s not bureaucracy, it’s science!” he objected. “Imagine, in a couple of months we’ll open this journal and see your entire journey. All the mistakes, all the discoveries. It’s like... a progress map.” I didn’t reply. But inwardly I admitted that sounded cool. A progress map. I really could use that if I wanted to achieve Awakening. You can’t reach something new without knowing where you’ve been before. “Alright, keep writing,” I grabbed a handful of stones. “Now we’re testing a simultaneous throw of multiple projectiles on different trajectories. This hasn’t been documented yet.” “Exactly!” Izuku clicked his pen. “That’ll be Experiment Number Two. And can I suggest the next one? I want to check how projectiles behave if the Mark is moving with acceleration...” “You just want to make me throw rocks at a running Bakugo.” Izuku blushed but smiled. “Well, that would be... informative.” I laughed. The sun was setting behind the mountains of garbage, and we kept throwing and recording, throwing and recording. And damn it, for the first time in a long time I felt like I was moving in the right direction. Not just having fun, not just testing boundaries—but building a system. And someday this system would lead me to Awakening.

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I got back to the children’s home after dark. Koji, Takumi, and Ryohei were already waiting in the room—their faces made it clear they were thirsting for details. “Well?!” Koji bounced up to me. “How was he? Did he explode? Scream? Kill anyone?” “He exploded, screamed, killed no one,” I collapsed onto the bed in exhaustion. “Details tomorrow. I’m wiped out.” “But you didn’t even do anything!” Koji protested. “I also trained,” I closed my eyes. “And started a training journal.” Silence fell over the room. “A journal?” Takumi repeated. “A journal,” I confirmed. “Izuku insisted. Now we’ll have a progress map.” “A progress map,” Ryohei echoed slowly. His skin turned dark green—deep surprise. “That sounds... encouraging.” “Exactly,” I rolled onto my side. “Now sleep. Tomorrow’s a new day, and I have to see how Firecracker reacts to the sound of paper scraping.” The last thing I heard before sinking into sleep was Koji’s laughter and Takumi’s whisper: “I want a journal like that too.” And, it seemed, my little fan club at the home had started taking their Quirks just a bit more seriously.