Maritime Hero Vocational School
M.H.V.A. is a Hero and Support Academy with a primary focus on providing specialized defense against threats from the sea. As a Vocational school, M.H.V.A. has students learning and acting alongside active duty Pro Heroes who are on duty all day every day, even within the classroom. The school is not only a place of study, but an active Base with several Hero Agencies operating within it. That means that response personnel and Hero's dispatch from the premises and teachers and students may be called into duty at a moments notice.
The goal of M.H.V.A is to provide hands on experience, as well as tough moral fibre by keeping students on their toes, and allowing them not only a front row seat to watch real heroes prepare and respond to emergencies, but also to be apart of the process themselves.
In M.H.V.A your class is like your ship, and each of its parts must work in order for the ship to sail unimpeded. It is heavily encouraged for students to govern themselves. The goal being heroes and supports who can enter any team and be able to properly converse, asses and make the best use of their qualities in rescue or combat operations.
First years are often relegated to less demanding tasks due to the lack of practical experience, this includes being dispatched to coastal villages in order to provide evacuation instructions to citizens, help the elderly and pets get to higher ground, piling sandbags to avoid flooding, and providing simple first aid to injured.
Second Years are required to aid their teachers in preparation for dispatch to an emergency. Usually several students will help by assembling a response kit, including bringing the Hero their Hero Uniform and any other necessary gear. If they are not at the school building during this call, it is the job of the class Commander to assign students to assemble and bring a kit with them. This is practiced heavily beforehand and is usually the first class of the year. Leaving without being properly equipped can result in catastrophe and not keeping track of the kits or bringing them wherever they go can result in marks lost.
Third Years spend most of their time at the remote campus, B.
B Campus is a re purposed oil rig in the middle of the ocean, from there they conduct tests, do emergency preparedness drills and act as a checkpoint and reserve force for incidents too far off the coast for the inland base to respond to quickly enough. These include sinking ships, villain commandeering of vessels (pirates), and natural disasters.
For third years to move on to B Campus, they must earn two stars through their studies and conduct before being admitted to the campus. This is carefully considered by a board of pro heroes to make sure they are not sending students who are not ready to a relatively dangerous area.
Students in first year will learn each of the following curriculum's equally. This is to ensure that prospective heroes and supports have a firm understanding of the roles their allies play in their operations. This will allow them to lend a hand in any of the other specialties if hands are short. First year students will be required to wear the generic first year uniform, after graduation from first year they will be provided with a uniform of the specialty they have chosen, the specialties are:
-This course exclusively trains and specializes in rescue, first aid, and evacuation.
The symbol of this course is the life preserver.
-This course deals with the prevention, clean-up and containment of environmental hazards, this includes oil spills, toxic waste, and the management of toxic or harmful villain residues. They may be called to active scenes if a villains quirk is noxious or is substance based in order to contain it and allow combat specialists to provide capture.
The symbol of this course is the net.
-This course focuses on coordinating and management of dispatched heroes. A good coordinator makes sure to keep the whole team properly informed especially if the situation changes.
The symbol of this course is the anchor and rope, as it is the class that makes certain the team is grounded and isn't in danger of becoming unhitched.
-As the title suggests, Hero course is a a course specifically geared towards combat and containment of villains and threats on the seas. This also includes defense of the shoreline.
The symbol of this course is the harpoon.
Students may also choose to buy course-specific casual clothing for lounge-wear and recreational activities. They can be custom fitted to fit students with mutations or have other custom needs.
These can be ordered in the schools Supply and Spirit shop, where students can buy school supplies, textbooks, school spirit items and tacky...I mean tasteful coffee mugs and water bottles
Students also have swimsuits for water training and recreational swimming at the schools Beach. The design is the same for boys and girls:
(First years will learn the basics of all of the below, and then advance on to specialist courses in second year)
-Seamanship: Students learn to sail with their classmates as their first classes, allowing each of the students to get a physical understanding of how they need to conduct themselves in class. Sailing is the first class of the year.
Communication- Students will undergo many tests and practical enactments of strategies by managing tournaments against one another. Seeing the failures and triumphs of communication through victory or defeat. Students will also be asked to coordinate pretend rescues in the training area.
Underwater Rescue and Recovery- Students will be taught skills such as swimming with an unconscious rescue, diving, and problem solving underwater. Such as setting up underwater puzzles for students to then try and solve without panicking in the depths.
Law- International Water laws are incredibly important for students to understand, as their journeys may take them across borders and into waters where they may need to withdraw. Such as which areas a villain can run to where they can no longer be pursued thanks to a sanctuary law.
Environmental Threat- This class will teach students about environmental disasters such as oil spills as well as teach them all about natural disasters and how they form, and all the ways of preparing citizens and themselves for getting caught in one.
Aid: All students will be required to be proficient in rendering first aid to injured during a rescue or retrieval. This class also teaches students how to approach someone who's hurt but perhaps is also refusing help or is too overwrought to allow aid near.
It is hard, but not terribly uncommon for students to want to go into two specialties. However, MHVA has a bit of a unique approach to this.
A student MUST still choose a specialty, whether it be Hero, Aid, ect. But they can also choose a minor specialty.
For example: As a Hero student, I can get a minor certificate for Aid work by choosing Aid and Evac as my minor. This can be done one of two ways, students choosing to minor in another specialty must complete ALL standard classes to the minimum requirement just like the other students. They can either choose to take supplementary courses in the evenings and on weekends for advanced training in their minor specialty, OR opt to take a 4th year after all three years of their main specialty is complete. There is no uniform change associated with minoring in another course, however, students who choose to do two may wear the pin of the other courses symbol on their chest so that heroes and other responders know they have experience in that field.
MHVA might be a tough school but it likes to balance out the rigorous curriculum with an equal amount of activities that are both helpful to the school community and fun.
Once a semester after exams are complete, the students of MHVA are let out after lunch for free time until sun-down, at which time the entire school, including staff, gather on the beach adjacent to the main building for bonfires, corn-roasts, volleyball, fireworks, and to socialize and have fun with friends as a reward for working hard all semester long.
The first week of classes for First year students is learning to sail with their classmates. The teacher will take them out and spend the first day taking them through the parts of the boat, where everything is, directions ect. Then the teacher will simply sit down and go “Alright, now sail”. The students must cover for each other's weaknesses and sail to a checkpoint out on the water. Almost no students have ever made it out to the checkpoint on the first day.
After the students have finally made it to the checkpoint each morning afterwards they will all go to the boat and sail to the checkpoint and back before beginning classes. The teacher will not give any instructions, and the students will eventually work together well enough that they don't need to be told what to do. Usually on the final sail back to the school on the final day, the teacher will sabotage the boat, or create a situation in which the students need to do some problem solving in order to get back to shore. Aka, repairing a rip in the sail, steering the ship with their quirks instead of wind, ect. At the end of the week the class usually takes a picture on the sailboat which most usually send home to their parents.
Every Friday, two classes from any of the companies at the school is chosen to replace the cafeteria staff. The students come up with their own menus are tasked with organizing and sending people out to the nearby town (with supervision) for the ingredients, and to manage the kitchen in order to cook meals for both the student body and the kitchen staff. This allows for the students to gain valuable kitchen skills they’ll take into adulthood, as well as cooperation and giving back to the staff that works very hard day and night to keep them all fueled up.
Because MHVA is a rather remote campus, students will be away from their families during special events like birthdays. Some families might request and book visits and time off campus for the day to celebrate, but the staff also makes sure not to let anyone go unnoticed. Staff will often leave cake and special treat spreads of pastries and fruit in dorm common areas when someone on the floor has a birthday. Students are permitted to have celebrations in their dorm common areas, inviting students from other floors as long as it is communicated to the Dorm Management beforehand.
One of the biggest events of MHVA is Co-op Fest, a several day long festival where other hero schools all gather at MHVA’s sprawling Maritime campus in order to have tournaments, play games to promote camaraderie. Activities include each school hosting a booth with games or food in order to have students work together and to network with Hero’s you may be rubbing elbows with in the future. The focus is healthy competition, good sportsmanship and of course, cooperation.
The students welcome the visiting schools each year by painting up a banner to hang on the schools signage.
Sparring Ring: Set up on the schools beach for training, filled with loose sand to break the fall of students thrown from the ring:
B Campus is a campus exclusively for third years doing internship programs and training under the watchful eyes of their Pro-Hero supervisors. The second campus was established when the need arose of a base in which they could have heroes already quite a ways out at sea in case emergencies from ships were called in.
Because MHVA spends the first two years fostering teamwork, cooperation and camaraderie, it is important for third years to then experience independence. Pro Heroes must be able to assess and apply their skills and experience alone. Sometimes they will be cut off from communications, their sidekicks and their comrades, and need to rely on their own snap-judgement and learned skills in order to make their mission successful.
While B Campus is quite remote it actually has a number of uses other than a deployment and training site for pro heroes and their charges. B Campus is actually home to a small environmental research lab. This lab does studies on what is in the ocean waters, climate change, and also does a host of experiments to figure out ways to combat the worsening of the global environment. Their most recent study involved splicing the genes of several high-oxygen producing plants in order to create a plant that could produce more oxygen than a full sized tree. However due to the Incident on B Campus last year, the experiments have been put on hold until further notice.
B Campus has re-opened after an entire year of remaining dormant out on the ocean. The closure comes in the wake of missing Environmental Teacher Ester Mcgillis going missing from the premises in December of 20XX. The incident reports filed by students and active pro-heroes on the site all coincide with a large explosion occurring in the greenhouses on the top tier of the facility. When investigated it was discovered a large hole was blown into the side of the building and responders were able to look down at the sea below. After roll-call and a several hour long search, it was discovered that Ms. Ester McGillis was in-fact MIA from the property.
This year marks the re-opening of B Campus since the incident, and has been fully cleared by the Pro Hero board of Education to resume training and operations.
Third year students on deploy are encouraged to keep an eye out for any evidence or passing information on her whereabouts. The lab has not been re-opened at this time.
Update: These events have been linked to the recent attack by the villain organization V.F.A on MHVA, a detailed document of this event can be found here:
Detailed record of the attacks on MHVA and the B Campus Incident Explained
Hero Class Teacher: Rakshitha Patel
Hero Name: Mimos
Quirk: Mime Artist -by miming certain actions she can create invisible objects, such as miming she is inside an invisible box will build a barrier around her.
Rakshitha is the youngest and most energetic of the MHVA teachers. She owns her own Agency within the schools compound comprised of her, her managing officer and a slew of sidekicks she usually chooses from graduating students.
She strives to have the best of the best under her even if it means forcibly abducting students from other classes and stealing them for herself. She is incredibly jokey but has a bite. She will fight other teachers for the rights to have certain students intern for her. Her latest competition is with Hero Coordinator Wilks, over who gets to have Davey for themselves when he graduates. (See “Past Commendations section for info on this student)
Hero Course Teacher
Name: Johan Wilks
Hero name: [Retired] Eagle-Eye
Quirk: Ability to see and focus on a target over two miles away.
During a recovery mission out to sea, some microscopic metal shards whipped by gale-force winds off of a wrecked freighter blew into his eyes. Afterwards he developed cataracts, he can see and occasionally use his quirk, but he specifically reserves it for emergencies as it is quite painful to activate nowadays. He is retired and now teaches the hero courses at the same place he used to dispatch as a pro hero. He can be hard on his students, but is incredibly patient and kind. He wants to make sure that he readies them for the things that he’s seen which can sometimes make him come off as overbearing and cold.
Cheif Medical Doctor: Dai Tanaka
(art and character belong to MIACAKES183)
Aid and Evac Teacher
Name: Molly Bartlet
Quirk: St. Bernard (enhanced scent, used for tracking lost people trapped or injured in the wilderness.
She's a sweet mom-like Lady to her students, when she gets excited about a topic she's teaching her tail was excessively. Historically St.Bernards barrels are filled with brandy, this is so when they find lost people in the snow, they drink it which causes that blood to return to thier extremities. BC alcohols banned on campus, it is filled with life-saving equipment
Containment Teacher
Name: Benjamin Harrison
Hero Name: Polar Vortex
Quirk: Polar Vortex : his Quirk allows him to control a frosty wind and create ice from moisture in the air. He uses this to temporarily plug holes in sinking ships to prolong evacuation time, make platforms to run on the water and to bring objects to the surface by surrounding them with ice. His mutant ability allows him to have the strength and the cold resistance of a polar bear. It isn't really known how
Benjamin got his Quirk. He was discovered by a oil tanker that was aiding in the cleanup of a chemical spill nearby. They identified a polar bear trapped and in distress and to the shock of the responding Heroes knew very basic speech. He was brought aboard and treated and was non-violent, he quickly learned the language and became an active member of the ship. The crew joking that he used to be kinda thier big pet when he was still learning.
Ben is incredibly passionate about environmental dangers and protecting people and animals from toxic chemicals. He is known to be an incredibly affable and patent teacher who would rather teach his students by making them do the things rather than teach them about it. He learned hands-on his whole life and thinks it's the most effective teaching method.
He served on the "Luck Be a Lady" Hero Ship alongside Wilks and the two have been best friends thier whole careers. He helped Wilks get treated after being with him for the accident that ended up costing him his hero career.
Name: Akira Yamato
Quirk: None
M.H.V.A Principle and Communications Professor
Yamato's mission is to create sea and shore-worthy Heroes out of everyone. Quirk or no. Growing up on the mobile hero base "Luck be a Lady" she was able to see firsthand the contribution both Heroes and civilians can provide one another in disaster situations.
She founded MHVA to make her contribution to the hero world as she doesn't have the physical capability to be a pro hero. Instead, she decided to make them.
She is incredibly stern and serious, and doesn't take messing around from anybody. Not even her fellow teachers. Rakshitha and her are classmates from a hero university on the mainland, and she grew up on the base where Ben and Wilks served as pro Heroes. Wilks treats her like an unofficial daughter.
Luck be a Lady” was a massive cruise-liner sized vessel owned by Principle Yamato’s Father, that patrolled the open seas and acted as a mobile base to deploy heroes to emergencies all over the world. Several hero agencies ran out of it, most of them being maritime, and Yamato grew up there watching heroes like Wilks and Ben in action as an every day occurrence.
Her father was a very busy man running the vessel and so she fondly remembers a young Wilks tiredly putting up with her even though he was exhausted from the sometimes more than 24 hour shifts they would preform on rescue missions.
Pestering him with showing her card tricks or other slights of hand she’d picked up from the other sailors and fisherman onboard that she happened to meet. Pulling on his beard to make him wake up and pay attention.
The ship itself sank when Yamato was around 8, it had struggled with listing for several days following a rather harsh typhoon that exacerbated some damage from a villain apprehension from prior to that. Being evacuated for the first time really put into perspective for Yamato just what the people they are helping are going through, and it has shaped her approach of disaster situations even into adulthood.
A few years after Luck be a Lady sank, her and her father were able to put together a team to try and salvage some of it to build a new ship. The ship had come in two when it hit the seabed, and the front half of it was immediately brought to the surface and towed to a nearby beach where it was hollowed out of parts and left to sit. The back half was in much better shape and was actually largely used in the construction of the new Vessel “Luck was a Lady”
When Yamato was still a teen she had learned all she knew from her experiences on the ship and from what other heroes and sailors had taught her along the way. After she graduated college she made a trip with Wilks (who had just gotten out of surgery for his eye injuries) and Ben, and while walking the hallowed decks of the ship, decided she couldn’t just let her rot away, and immediately began drawing up plans to re-create the space.
The “Luck be a Lady’s” decks were all re-fitted and had a proper foundation built below it. M.H.V.A was built around it, using its bow as a centerpiece, it still dispatching heroes and providing a hands-on learning experience just as she used to in her glory days.
Yamato feels a great pride in her ship despite her not technically being able to follow in her sister ships steps across the ocean anymore, but whenever her father on his vessel “Luck was a Lady” enters Japanese waters, Yamato always makes sure to blow the ships signal horn in the little ditty he used to let her play on the original ship when he would allow her into the control deck. He plays it back before they head back out into international waters.
Past Commendations / Notable Students:
MHVA has received many awards and commendations over the years, not just for the quality of their training and instruction, but for their civic and hero duties as well.
Notably, Third year students were instrumental to responding and carefully handling the situation of a cruise ship that had been taken over by villains, robbing everyone on board and holding them hostage. Students receive special commendations with the successful delivery of all unharmed cruise ship passengers.
First year students were vital in the apprehension of Syren, a woman villain whos singing can pull metal things towards her. She used her voice to pull in wealthy citizens yachts to their ship and rob them of their valuables. Stranded first year students allowed their ship to be pulled in, and played along, stalling until Pro's could be properly dispatched.
All art, (unless otherwise credited under the artwork above) is by me @nijicx
[Note: Before you ask, you may of course use this school in your oc creation, as long as you properly credit any designs used, such as the uniforms or symbols. If you do make one tag with #MHVAoc ]
