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Izuku ignored the clock ticking down in his head reminding him of how little time he had left in the exam as he pushed himself off of the robot he'd just managed to shut down by prying off the back panel and dusting the interior components. He flipped mid-air and landed in a crouch giving him enough time to adjust the finger strap on his right-hand glove and glance around himself to notice if anyone had seen what he had just done. There was no one around so he took off down an alleyway towards the fighting he could hear coming from the other end. He added the points to his internal total and grimaced. Nowhere near enough to pass at the rate he was going. It was taking far longer to incapacitate them enough to climb up and take out their insides than he had anticipated. Not only did it mean that he had less time overall to rack up points but it also sometimes left him open to having the robots sniped out from under him by other applicants.
Which while he couldn't really blame them for taking an opportunity where they found one he had to wonder how Heroic it was to do so especially when the flashy laser or other attack-type quirk was used almost hit him in the process.
He skidded around the corner and was greeted by the sight of a group of 3 pointers currently engaged in battle with a large group of applicants all trying to get that final hit in to get the points for taking the robot down. He frowned and then rushed forward. He felt eyes on him as he bypassed the group and continued on down the street. There was no point in attempting to get one of them first not with all the firepower already being thrown at them. He passed close enough to one of the robots that he slid aside the finger covering on his gloves and swiped its leg with all five fingers. He was already mostly past it when he felt it begin to crumble slightly under his touch. He removed his hand before his quirk could fully activate since he wasn't going to stick around to actually take it down.
The action did quiet the itch in his fingers to see if he would be able to take down a robot with his quirk like that.
Past the group, things were a little quieter. Just the carcasses of already destroyed robots. There must have been dozens of them. He sighed as he realized the group must have gone through here already and that there probably wasn't anything that hadn't already been taken out in this direction. He glanced around and contemplated climbing up on top of one of the buildings to get a better view of the surrounding area but before he could start the climb Present Mic's voice echoed through the arena warning them that time was quickly running out for them to get their last few remaining points. With a curse, he gave up on the thought of climbing and instead took off down another side alley in hopes of finding some pocket or robots that may have been missed by the others.
When he reached the new street he was at first disappointed because there was another pile of robots spread out across the pavement. Then he realized that most of them were still twitching. Whatever had taken them down hadn't done so completely. He rushed forward towards the nearest one sliding his finger out of his glove to press his fingers against the back panel long enough for it to deteriorate so he could reach in and destroy the components inside causing the beacon on the robot to go dark. He stood ready to rush to another one when a figure brushed past him. It was the girl that had stopped him from landing on his face earlier as she rushed through the fallen robots, she placed her full hand against each of them and they lifted up in the air. After she had a few of them she stopped and pressed her hands together and yelled "Release" all of the robots in the air crashed to the ground. Izuku just managed to jump out of the way of one of the pieces that flew off during the impact before it hit him.
"Sorry!"
Izuku had to give her credit; she actually did sound like she meant it.
"That's twenty-five points!"
Izuku barely stopped himself from congratulating her. Twenty-Five! That was way more than he'd managed to gather. His strategy of sticking to the side streets and using his quirk in small doses was definitely starting to backfire on him. He needed to pick up the pace or he was going to get left behind. In the distance, he spotted a robot starting to clamber to its feet. He rushed over in its direction out of the corner of his eyes, he saw the girl do the same until she seemed to realize that he was already planning on going for it and she stopped in her tracks. Her eyes swinging to look in a different direction.
It was Izuku's turn to be stopped when the boy that had yelled at him for being disrespectful for mumbling during the orientation raced up to the robot and sliced it in half with a single kick. Izuku's eyes widened at the sight of what looked to be actual exhaust pipes sticking out of the boy's bulky legs. That was such a COOL quirk and reminded Izuku enough of the Turbo Hero: Ingenium that he had to wonder they were related. But surely if this boy was part of a Legacy family like that he would have gotten a Recommendation.
"I've got 45!"
Izuku's thoughts ground to a halt at that proclamation that somehow managed to sound very matter of fact and not at all like cocky bragging that one might have expected. Forty-Five points! How on earth had he gotten so many? He felt panic rise up inside him. If this one boy had gotten so many points that must mean that most of the robots were already taken care of. Even with a seemingly endless budget, UA would surely only have a set amount in each testing location. Each location...it hit him for the first time since they'd been directed to two buses that the group of applicants at this site was only half of the group. That meant that he not only had to worry about the points that this group was racking up but the other group as well.
And Kacchan was in the other group...
"There are five minutes remaining!"
That got him moving. He needed to scramble. Needed to double back and maybe get lucky that there were more like this group that hadn't quite been taken out as much as people had thought. It may be possible to get a few more points if he was very, very lucky. Not that he'd ever had much luck with, well, luck.
As if the universe was trying to prove a point the ground began to shake and the buildings down the street exploded apart. The force of the shaking knocking him from his feet to his knees. For half a second he thought there was a slight chance that this might be a real earthquake. Then a metal face appeared in the slowly evaporating dust cloud from the collapsing buildings. A very, very large metal face. It took Izuku a minute to register just what he was seeing. The size and scale of the robot were almost beyond human conception. But he recognized what this was. It was the final robot that they'd been shown during the orientation.
The Zero Pointer.
He stared at it with wide eyes as it rumbled in their direction shaking and destroying every building in its path. Why did UA even have something like that? Especially if it didn't serve any purpose other than to terrify the students. He guesses that was probably the point. Sometimes as a hero, you had to face things that were terrifying. Usually, unless you were a top tier hero on the level of All Might or Endeavor, you were doing so as part of a team not on your own. He glanced around and frowned as he saw most of the applicants who had been standing staring up at the robot with horror turned and took off running in the opposite direction. The dark-haired boy with the exhaust pipes shot past him and their eyes briefly met. The boy hesitated for the briefest of seconds but then the robot smashed down to more buildings and the boy averted his gaze and picked up speed.
Izuku couldn't blame him, couldn't blame any of them really, for leaving. They knew it was worth zero points. So why go up against it when there was no point? Unless they were secretly awarded points for things other than villain capture, which now that he thought about it it really did sound like a thing the school that used giant robots might do, there was no point trying to take it out. With a sigh, he pulled himself up to his feet. He tried to ignore the rumble of the giant death robot and concentrate on his sad lack of points and what he might be able to do about it. He might just have enough time to try and find any robots that might not have been taken out fully but it didn't seem very likely. Still, he turned away from the robot and made to rush back up the street in the same direction that everyone else had gone.
"Help!"
He stopped dead in his tracks and jerked around. It took only a moment to find where the cry had come from. A few feet back from where the robot was rumbling up the street trapped in a pile of rubble from the buildings it had already brought down was the girl. Their eyes met and he remembered how nice she'd been to him earlier in the day when she'd helped him. He knew logically there had to be some safety measure in place that would stop the robot before it reached her. There was no way that they would actually let her get hurt by it. But she looked so hurt and scared as she tried to pull herself out from underneath where she was trapped. He had to help her.
Something bright and determined jolted through him. He recognized it instantly as the drive he held within him to be a hero. The drive that had kept him going all these years when people laughed at him when he said he wanted to become a hero, when they looked at him with fear in their eyes and forced him to wear gloves even though he'd had control over his quirk for years, when they watched his every move to make sure he wasn't going to spontaneously become a villain right in front of their eyes. Rescuing her wasn't going to help him in this exam, in fact doing so would mean for sure that he would not get enough points to pass, but if he ran off and left her behind what did that really say about him as a person?
What sort of hero would he be?
He took one step in her direction and then before he really understood what he was doing he was running. As he reached her he gave her a quick once over and then jumped over the rubble barrier and kept moving towards the robot. He could have decayed the rocks trapping her but he still felt uncomfortable using his quick too close to living things. He was always afraid that it might not deactivate when he wanted it to. But even more than that there was something niggling at the back of his brain. Something driving him to face the Zero Pointer head-on. He had never tried his quirk on something this large and he wanted, no he NEEDED, to know how much damage he could do if he put everything into it. Since he was going to fail this exam and probably would be declined a spot in the General Ed course once they fully realized what his quirk could do, this might be the only chance he got to try something like this.
He could sense the robot zeroing in on his presence as he grew close to it. He managed to dodge one of its large arms as it swung at him and slid under the debris the other one knocked off a nearby building. Then he skidded to a stop right in front of it. It had stopped its movement and was eyeing him only the blinking light on the side of the head showing that it was still active. He struggled to catch his breath as he eyed its base. This would provide him with the easiest place to get a whole hand on it, but it would also leave him vulnerable to the swinging arms. It was going to be a matter of speed and if he could outrun it. He also wasn't sure how long it would take for his quirk to start working on such a large target. He had to hope that it would work because there was no way that he was going to be able to climb up it and find a panel to try and get to the inside components without either getting knocked off or running out of time and having it get shut off before he could accomplish his goal.
This was going to come down to an all or nothing approach.
Again he was moving before he really had a chance to register what was happening. As he rushed forward he pulled off the gloves from both hands. Above him, he thought he could hear what sounded like one of the drones that had been circling the arena swoop in closer. If this worked there wasn't going to be any chance that he'd be able to hide it so he might as well give them a show on his way out. Maybe they would give him a copy of the tape so he could study it in the future.
He reached the base and taking a deep breath he pressed his right hand against it, four fingers and then finally the fifth. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the space inside where his quirk lived and activated it. He felt it crackling throughout him tingling the skin into goosebumps as he continued to pour everything he had into it. It took a moment but he felt the metal underneath his hand begin to crumble. It was working but he could already tell it wasn't going to be enough, the robot was too large and the base was thicker and sturdier than the panels on the smaller robots had been. It was still moving, he had to stop it quickly or it would run right over him. He licked his lips and pressed his other hand against it all five fingers splayed against the already crumbling metal. Having more surface to work with his quirk raced to flow out of both of his hands. He closed his eyes and pushed out with every bit of energy he could muster and pushed it outwards.
He had never tried anything like this. The quirk therapists and trainers that he’d worked with had been more interested in teaching him how to control Decay so that he could lock it down tight rather than figuring out how to use it to actually destroy things or learning how to fight battles with it. He had and his mother had spent a couple of vacations holed up in a cabin in the woods far removed from anything or anyone where he'd done as much experimentation as he felt comfortable with. He'd devoured every bit of quirk theory and applied quirk science as he could get his hands on. Problem is that there wasn't a lot of literature on quirks similar to Decay because people who had them were usually either villains or kept to themselves. Everything he knew he'd pretty much taught himself how to do it. Using Decay was instinctual. Simply destroying most things was easy. Actually controlling it, however, making it do what he wanted it to do or targeting something in a specific manner, was a much more difficult task. He knew it had to be possible, he could feel it in his gut that it was possible, he just hadn't figured out how to do it yet.
Time stretched tight for a long moment and he held his breath as he waited for some sign that what he was doing was working. Maybe it was just too large, maybe he just didn't have enough power or control to bring the whole thing down yet. He could feel the energy being drained out of him he'd never used this much, adrenaline must be pushing him past the time where he usually had to give out. He should stop before he drained himself completely so that he didn't pass out and make a huge fool out of himself in front of all the pro heroes and school administrators watching.
Then just as he about to cut off the connection to his quirk something flared up inside him. He felt himself connecting to the very heart of the robot even though it was far away from where he was he pushed out with Decay and imagined himself laying five points of contact against it. The robot came to a shuddering stop and let out a high-pitched metallic shriek. Izuku's eyes popped open and he jerked back away from the robot unsure what had happened. He watched as hairline cracks formed over every inch of metal in front of his eyes. For the air was filled with the sound of cracking and popping. Then he blinked and the entire robot shattered into dust.
Eyes widening he turned and ran because it might be breaking into dust but there would still be a lot of it and being coated in metallic dust was probably not the healthiest thing. He tripped over his feet and crashed to the ground just as the dust cloud rushed forward to engulf him. He tucked his head close to his chest and threw his arms up to further protect himself from getting any dust or debris into his lungs. He was careful to curl his fingers up inside the purposefully long sleeves of the shirt he was wearing, made from the same material as his gloves, as he felt a wave of exhaustion crash over him. A sound of a loud buzzer cut through the air.
"Time!"
Izuku let out a choked, strangled laugh because he realized that while it had felt to him like it had taken him hours to destroy the robot had only taken minutes. Exhilaration shot through him at the sheer audacity of what he'd just managed to do and how in the end it would mean absolutely nothing because he'd failed to get enough points to pass the exam.
He glanced up at the sound of footsteps. A little old lady with a cane was clomping in his direction. He struggled to try and push himself up into an upright position in the presence of Recovery Girl.
"None of that," she said as she swatted at him to stop his movement. "That was quite the impressive show you just put on I can only imagine the energy that took out of you."
"I'm okay..." he choked out in a raspy voice then his eyes widened and he glanced down the street. "There's a girl, she's trapped!"
"She'll be fine, as will you if you would let me do my job."
He struggled again to get to his feet, each attempt failed as he collapsed back to the ground. He frowned and then managed to get himself halfway up to his knees and attempted to pull himself along the ground using the knuckles of his still closed hands. He was stopped by the tips of her shoes appearing in front of him.
"You're going to be causing me so much trouble in the future I can tell already," she sighed wearily and then leaned over him to brush the hair off his forehead causing him to look up into her eyes which were crinkling with a warm smile. "Since you're not willing to sit still and listen to me that means it's time for a little nap. Thankfully I don't think it will take very much."
"A nap?"
He frowned in confusion only to realize what she meant moments later when a pair of lips pressed against his forehead. He felt what little energy he had left within him start to drain out of his system.
"No!" he whined softly and tried to fight against it pulling himself around her towards where the girl had been. “I have to help her…”
Moments later he was asleep.
~ ~ ~
The room full of pro-heroes, non-hero teachers, and school administrators, who had thought they'd seen pretty much everything over the course of their careers, watched in stunned silence as the giant Zero-Point robot crumbled to dust in front of them on the giant screens that they were monitoring the exams on. Then the room erupted into excited chatter and even a few cheers.
Up near the front of the room Mic regained himself enough to call the exam to an end and to press the button to signal the medical staff that they could enter the arena. Then he flicked another switch and turned to the two people standing nearest to him Eraserhead and Vlad King. A few feet away, sitting in a chair off on his own, All Might cringed slightly as the blonde's mouth opened and he expected something loud and piercing to be produced.
"Did I really just see that?" When he finally spoke, however, it came out in a soft, dazed voice instead.
"What the hell was THAT!"
Vlad King was the one that let out a sharp loud exclamation instead as he eyed the screen with a gleam in his eyes. He was one of the two First-Year homeroom teachers, All Might remembered from his brief introduction to the teaching staff he'd be directly working with a few days earlier, it made sense that he would be extra interested in the quirks of a prospective student that might end up under his care.
"His name is Midoriya Izuku, the quirk is called Decay," All Might turned his head towards Nedzu who was still sitting in his seat with his hands folded primly over what looked to be a folder in his lap. His eyes were shining brightly in a way that sent a slight chill down All Might's spine. "It does well..." the Principal continued with a wave of his hand toward the monitor that was now showing a replay of the Zero Pointer being taken down by the teenager. "That."
"You knew about this?" Eraserhead growled as he stormed across the room and reached for the folder on Nedzu's lap.
"It's my job to know about the quirks of every prospective student," Nedzu said calmly, he held tight to the folder as he met Eraserhead's eyes. "He has control over it Shouta, I wouldn't have let him into the arena with the other children if he didn't."
"That's not what I meant and you know it," Eraserhead said with a glare as he finally managed to wrestle the folder from Nedzu's grasp.
"I must admit I was not aware it was so powerful." Nedzu continued sounding a touch gleeful at this new piece of unexpected information that had just fallen into his lap. "I contacted his mother after I read through his application wanting more information, as I usually do to get to know the children with quirks that might not read so well on paper alone..."
'Children with potentially dangerous or volatile quirks,' All Might's brain supplied internally as he filled in the blanks of Nedzu's carefully worded statement.
"She provided me with some videos of him training with it. It was impressive especially considering that he is mostly self-taught, but nothing on the level of what we just witnessed."
"If he has this much power why wasn't he using it the whole time?" Present Mic exclaimed. "He could have gotten way more points if he'd done this from the start rather then fiddling around with their insides!"
"Why do you think? He's probably been told his whole life never to use his quirk like that in public or at all..." Eraserhead opened the folder and started flipping through it. "He’s probably been watched like a hawk since it first appeared just in case he slipped up enough to give people the excuse to say he proved them right. That he's a villain after all.
There was something very personal in Eraserhead's voice All Might noted. He'd probably had those sorts of comments thrown at him growing up with his own quirk. Though in his case it was a lot less destructive and way more useful to the general public than a quirk like Decay would be. Present Mic seemed to pick up on it as well as he stepped up next to the dark-haired hero and placed a hand on the back of his neck and gave it a gentle squeeze. For a brief moment, Eraserhead seemed to melt into the touch before standing up straight again the tension on his face gone. Present Mic had a soft smile on his lips as he leaned over the other hero's shoulder to read the files.
"Well you'll be there to help him move on from how he was treated in the past, Shou," Mic said cheerfully, despite the slightly pinched look that entered his expression as he read over something in the file. "Between the rescue points that he got for this and the points that he already had he's safely made it into the course."
“The way he rushed in to save her,” Vlad King said with a disbelieving shake of his head. “He just moved with almost no hesitation...I don’t think I’ve ever seen a student try to take on one of those things directly even to save someone. Not in the time that I’ve been teaching here at least...
"He'll be in my class."
Aizawa's voice was firm and sure like it was already a decided thing even though they didn't even have the full First Year roster list for the heroics course yet much less were at the point where they were placing students. Vlad King let out a squawk of indignation at the statement.
"Hey now! He might end up in my class! It will be a much calmer and healthier environment for him than whatever group of hellions you end up pulling this year!"
"My class!"
"No mine!"
All Might chuckled as the two fell into what seemed like a well-worn and comfortable bit of squabbling amongst themselves. He turned his attention back to the screen where it was being replayed again. Instead of watching the destruction of the robot and being interested in the sheer power of the quirk itself, he found himself focusing on the wielder instead. Watched as the boy registered what he was seeing and how he didn't hesitate for longer than half a second before taking off towards the robot once he had. Surely he had realized that the girl was in no real danger of being hurt. This was simply a test. There were plenty of failsafes in place that would have stopped the robot before it had come anywhere near her. By rushing towards the zero pointer he had actually put himself in danger and as far as he knew there was no reward for doing so.
But still, he had moved towards the danger instead of away from it.
The camera zoomed in on the boy's face and All Might found himself drawn to the expression on it as he moved. All Might recognized that look, a mix of determination, exhilaration, and just a bit of fear. He had seen that expression on the best of the heroes he'd worked with over the decades, on Nana's face right before a big fight, on his own face reflected in a glass window in the middle of a battle. It was the look of someone who put the well-being of others in front of themselves, the look of someone whose feet were moving before they really had a chance to think about what they were doing. The look of a true hero.
He reached out and touched the screen. It paused on the moment before the boy had reached out to touch the zero pointer. He was staring up at it with wide eyes but at that moment there was no fear on his face, only the glint of something slightly feral in his eyes as his mouth began to stretch into a smile.
"See something interesting?"
All Might didn't jump as Nedzu sidled up next to him holding the folder he must have managed to rescue from the other two heroes who were still arguing over who should get to have the boy in their homeroom class. Instead, he raised an eyebrow but said nothing as he turned back to face the monitor, examining the boy on the screen closely.
"I've seen that look before." All Might didn't know if Nedzu was talking about the look on the boy's face or his own. It probably didn't make much of a difference. "Reading his file, watching the videos his mother sent and what he did today...he really reminds me of someone..."
Nedzu's voice was light, almost teasing. It was enough to draw All Might's attention away from the screen. He pinned the principal with a narrow-eyed gaze. "A few days ago you arranged for me to come and meet Young Toogata," All Might reminded him softly. "Why put all of us through that if you were going to turn around and raise another suggestion?"
"It may have been my intention to push you in that direction, it may still be. But, in the end, it is not my decision to make. We also cannot deny that today has been very enlightening and that sometimes life has a way of throwing things unexpectedly at us that put us on a different path."
He held out the file in his hand towards All Might and gave him a little nod as he took it and then turned and walked off. All Might snorted softly to himself and remembered another day decades ago, not too much unlike today, when a chance encounter had changed his entire life's trajectory. It would be rather fitting, he thought, if the unexpected journey he’d been on ended in the same way it began.
He turned his attention back to the screen. It was still paused on the boy's face and he was once again caught by the expression on his face. Then the image disappeared replaced by a live feed of the arena. He could see the boy getting loaded up onto a stretcher while being fussed over by Recovery Girl. Something from deep inside him, he thought perhaps from the spot where the flame that was One for All glowed within in, surged up protectively maybe even verging on a bit possessively, and rang what felt like a crystal clear bell in his head. He twisted his hands around the edges of the folder and forced himself not to rush out there and claim a child he hadn't even been properly introduced to yet as his successor.
He had not felt this intense urge to pass the quirk on when he'd met Young Toogata. He had certainly seen what everyone saw in him. He was a good, strong young man. Cheerful and intelligent and held the drive and determination to become a good, no a great, hero someday. But even though his eyes were bright and his smile was wide there had just been something...missing...from the boy. He couldn't explain it he just knew that Young Toogata was not The One.
Not for the first time he wished he'd had more time with Nana. As a teenager, he hadn't thought to ask her why she'd chosen him. What she had seen in him that had said that she should make him the offer. If he was still on better terms with Gran Torino maybe he could ask the man if she had ever given him a reason. But that wasn't an option at the moment, he was on his own and he was quickly running out of time.
Unfortunately, it put him in a bit of a bind. He could not simply run-up to the first person he met and offer them OFA. Not just anyone could be a holder, he knew that much at the very least. The potential holder had to be a good fit for One for All and the quirk had to be a good fit for them. On the other side of the coin, he did not have the luxury of being overly picky. He would not be able to live with himself if the quirk's line died out because of him. He needed to make a decision and he needed to make it soon. He needed time to put his successor, whoever he ended up choosing, on the correct path before his time ran out completely. He sighed softly and glanced down at the folder in his hand wondering if maybe it held the answers he needed.
With real hope flaring up inside him for the first time in a long while he settled down on a nearby chair and began to read.
~ ~ ~
The End