Rain hit the beach like the sky had a personal vendetta.
Izuku lay flat on his back, staring up at clouds that looked like they'd been dipped in concrete. Water streamed down his face. His lungs burned. Every muscle in his body had filed a formal complaint and was now on strike.
The engine block sat three feet away, half-buried in wet sand. It mocked him. He could feel its judgment.
You know what? Screw you, engine block. Screw you and your entire automotive lineage.
He'd been trying to haul the bastard up a sand dune for the past forty minutes. The dune was maybe twenty feet high. Should've been simple. Grab the engine block, walk up the incline, drop it at the top with the other sacrifices to the god of pointless suffering.
Except the rain had turned the sand into something with the consistency of wet cement, the 150kg weights made every step feel like he was trudging through molasses, and the engine block weighed approximately as much as a small car. Also it was slippery. Also he hated it.
He'd made it halfway up. Then his foot slipped. Then physics remembered it existed and decided to get involved. Now he was back at the bottom, soaked to the bone, with sand in places sand had no business being.
If I die here, I want my tombstone to read: 'Killed by an inanimate object. Still looked good doing it.'
"Oi! Green Bean!" Hano's voice cut through the rain like a rusty knife. "Stop making love to the ground and get your ass up! That engine block isn't going to move itself!"
Izuku turned his head. The old man sat under a shelter made from a car hood propped up on cinder blocks. He looked dry. Comfortable. He had his thermos in one hand and what appeared to be a sandwich in the other.
Of course he has a sandwich. Of course he's comfortable. This is my life now.
"I'm aware!" Izuku shouted back. "Just taking a quick break to contemplate my life choices!"
"Contemplation time is over! Move!"
Izuku groaned. His body protested. His dignity wept. But he rolled onto his stomach, planted his hands in the wet sand, and pushed himself up. Water streamed from his hair. His compression shirt clung to his torso like a second skin, outlining every muscle that currently wanted to quit.
He turned his attention back to the engine block.
Alright. Round forty-seven. This time I'm going to—
A rock hit him in the back of the head.
Not hard enough to actually hurt. Just hard enough to be incredibly annoying.
Izuku whipped around. "Was that necessary?!"
Hano grinned from his shelter. "Your stance is sloppy! Weight distribution is garbage! You're using your back when you should be using your legs! Did I teach you nothing?!"
"You taught me that suffering builds character and that you're a sadist!"
"Correct! Now pick up that engine block and stop embarrassing yourself! I've seen toddlers with better form!"
I'm going to bury him in this trash pile. I'm going to find the rustiest, most disgusting piece of junk here and I'm going to drop it on his stupid flamingo shirt.
But he didn't. Because the old bastard was right.
Izuku squared his shoulders, walked over to the engine block, and crouched down. His thighs screamed. He ignored them. He slid his hands under the rusted metal, fingers finding purchase in gaps worn by time and corrosion.
Then he adjusted his stance. Feet shoulder-width apart. Knees bent. Core tight. Weight centered.
Lift with your legs. Don't be a hero. Well, don't be a stupid hero.
He pulled.
The engine block moved. Barely. It scraped against the wet sand with a sound like nails on a chalkboard mixed with the dying breath of a rusty whale.
Izuku stood, muscles straining, tendons threatening to snap. The weight of the engine block plus his training weights made his entire skeleton creak.
But he was standing. That counted for something.
Okay. Now the hard part. Walking.
Step one: plant his right foot higher on the dune. The sand shifted under his weight. He compensated, shifted his center of gravity, kept the engine block close to his body.
Step two: bring the left foot up. Don't lean back. Don't lose balance. Definitely don't think about how if he fell again, the engine block would probably crush something important.
Step three: breathe. Just breathe. Oxygen was good. Oxygen kept you alive.
I used to dream about being a hero. Saving people. Looking cool in a costume. Why did nobody mention that heroism involves manual labor in the rain?
Step four.
Step five.
The rain tried to kill him. The sand conspired with the rain. The engine block weighed more with every step, as if spite had mass and it was accumulating around the rusted metal.
But Izuku climbed.
His calves burned. His forearms felt like they'd been dipped in acid. His lungs pulled in air that tasted like rust and salt and the distinct flavor of regret.
Halfway up the dune.
Don't look down. Don't think about how far you have left to go. Just focus on the next step.
Step twenty-three.
Step twenty-four.
His right foot slipped.
Time did that thing where it slowed down just enough to let you appreciate how screwed you were. Izuku felt his balance shift. Felt gravity reach up with greedy hands. Felt the engine block start to tilt.
Then his body moved.
Not thought. Pure reflex. The kind of muscle memory that Hano had beaten into him over ten years of "gentle instruction."
He shifted his weight left, dropped his center of gravity, and used the momentum of the slip to pivot. His foot found solid ground. The engine block settled back into position.
Crisis averted.
Ha. Take that, physics. I have plot armor and spite.
"Better!" Hano called from below. "That recovery was almost competent! Now stop celebrating and finish the job!"
Izuku didn't waste breath on a response. He just climbed.
Step thirty-eight.
Step thirty-nine.
The top of the dune came into view. A small plateau of relatively flat sand, already littered with other pieces of junk he'd hauled up over the past week. Refrigerators. Washing machines. Car doors. The graveyard of his suffering.
Step forty-five.
Step forty-six.
His foot touched the plateau.
One more step. Just one more.
Izuku hauled the engine block up and over the lip of the dune. Then he walked three more steps, just to prove a point, and dropped it.
The engine block hit the sand with a wet thud that felt like the best sound in the entire world.
Izuku stood there, chest heaving, rain pouring down his face. He looked like hell. Felt worse. But he'd done it.
Victory tastes like rust and pain. Also I think I pulled something.
"Adequate!" Hano's voice drifted up through the rain. "Now come down here! We're doing obstacle sprints!"
Izuku's soul left his body.
I want a refund on this life. I want to speak to a manager.
But he turned around and started down the dune. Because that's what he did now. He suffered. He climbed. He moved junk from one place to another while an old man yelled critiques and threw rocks at his head.
This was Month Two.
He had eight more to go.
The obstacle sprints were exactly as terrible as they sounded.
Hano stood at one end of the junkyard, a stopwatch in one hand and a whistle in the other. He pointed to a rusted-out car frame about fifty meters away.
"Touch the car. Come back. Don't die. Go."
The whistle blew.
Izuku ran.
Except running in a junkyard was less about speed and more about not impaling yourself. The ground was a minefield of broken glass, sharp metal, and things that might have been solid or might have been ready to collapse under your weight. You never knew until you stepped on it.
His path took him between two towers of tires, through a gap in a pile of refrigerators, over a washing machine, around a cluster of rusted pipes that stuck up from the sand like skeletal fingers.
The weights dragged at him. His legs pumped. His eyes scanned the terrain ahead, processing information faster than conscious thought.
Gap between the tires, three feet, angle is bad, can't go straight, need to pivot left, avoid the glass, washing machine is unstable on the right side, step on the left corner, push off, keep momentum.
He touched the car frame. Spun. Sprinted back.
A microwave appeared in his path. He hurdled it. Landed wrong. Stumbled. Caught himself on a refrigerator door that immediately fell off its hinges. He kept running.
"Forty-two seconds!" Hano shouted. "Pathetic! Again!"