"SMAAAASSHHHHH!!!!"
BOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!
History is something hard to change, if you want to do so, then you better put some effort into it... that's what the scene of Midoriya destroying the 0-point villain to save Uraraka Ochako told Dante.
"In the end, even with my help, things went just like they were supposed to happen..."
Zero... Such was the number of villains Midoriya Izuku managed to destroy. Even after he received Knuckles's gloves from Dante, Midoriya's performance during the exam stayed basically the same as what happened in the anime.
'As I thought... His problem isn't his power, it's his mindset.'
Just like in the anime, the reason why Midoriya was unable to destroy any robot was simply that he was too scared to act. Although he happened to come face to face with some villains multiple times, it always ended up with him being too scared to move, allowing other examinees to steal his points.
"His years of being bullied and humiliated made him into someone who doesn't dare to fight for himself, it's only because he admires All Might that he has at least the courage to fight for others. Now that he has OFA though, it's only a question of time before he finds that lost courage back, but..."
At that point of the story, Midoriya was only starting his character development, hoping for him to change drastically from the original plot just because of a pair of gloves was simply not realistic.
'Even then... He is not worthy yet. "
Such was Dante's final evaluation of Midoriya. Unfortunately for the green-haired boy, his plot armor wouldn't help him in getting Dante's support, he would have to prove his worth and earn the reincarnator's respect.
"I'm back."
As Dante was watching Uraraka slap Midoriya, saving him from a premature death, the clone he had sent out to farm points finally returned.
"Good. How many points did you get?"
"Well, since the goal was just to earn enough to get accepted in the school, I only got us 50 points."
"50? Mm, if I remember correctly, Midoriya will get 60 points or something for his little stunt..."
"Yeah, something like that. Why?"
"Nothing. Anyway, you came back just in time, the exam is about to end."
The moment he said that, Present Mic's voice resounded in all the training grounds simultaneously.
"THE TEST IS OVEEEEEER!!!!!!!!!"
Now that the test was finally over, all the examinees were finally able to sigh in relief. Among all of them, the ones who were the most relieved were without a doubt those in Ground D.
"Thank god it's finally over!"
"I don't want to stay in the same place as these two monsters!"
"We were not even able to score enough points because of them!"
"Yeah... I guess we can say goodbye to our dreams... Shit!"
While Ground D examinees were lamenting their fates, the duo at the origin of their suffering was busy doing something else.
"So, how many points did you get Ren?"
"76 and you?"
"75... *Sigh* Looks like you win this one, well done brother."
"Haha, it was a nice match, it's the first time I had this much fun outside of the Dream World."
"Yeah haha, and if everything goes according to Dante's plan, then things will only get more and more interesting."
"Yeah... Anyway, time to go, let's find Dante and Kioko, and let's get back to the hotel."
"Sounds good!"
And just like that, the U.A. High School Entrance Examination came to an end. As U.A. was the number one hero school of the country, the elite of the elite, it wasn't rare for it to have strong students each year. But even with that, this year's new examinees were particularly good, even more so when it came to certain examinees, the principal and the teachers couldn't help but be in a good mood after finding such precious gems.
After all the students went back home, the results of the examination finally became known to the teachers, and unlike in the manga, new names actually appeared on the list of new students. Another quite unexpected thing was that this year's examinees were so good that the school actually decided to change the number of students that were picked, changing the number of new hero course students from forty to forty-two.
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Japan, Musutafu, Ariake Hotel.
Two hours after the end of the test, Dante and his friends were back at their hotel. Since U.A. was located in the Shizuoka prefecture and Dante and his friends came from the Chiaki prefecture, the orphanage had accepted to place them in a hotel for the duration of the exam. Now that they were done with the exam, it was finally time for them to pack up their stuff and go back home, but before that, Dante wanted to have a debrief of the day with his friends.
"Alright guys, good job for today, we all should be accepted in the school with our performances."
After hearing Dante, Hayato was the first one to speak.
"Well, it was pretty easy so no surprise there. With our performances, it should be easy for us to grab the top rank right?"
Hearing that, Dante smiled mysteriously.
"Oh, really now? Can you guys tell me how many points you managed to get?"
Seeing his behavior, the others quickly realized that there was something fishy going on.
"76."
"75."
"50."
Although Kioko's score was rather low, there wasn't much surprise there, she had already made it clear that she wasn't interested in the exam. On the other hand, Ren and Hayato who had taken the test a bit more seriously ended up with some rather high scores.
"I see, I got 50 points too."
Knowing that there was more to it, Hayato pressed Dante.
"So, what is it? Is there someone who managed to get more points than us?"
Hearing that, Dante smiled and waved his hand, causing the air to distort, and soon, a list of names and other pieces of information appeared in front of everybody.
Rank 1: Katsuki Bakugo - 77 points.
Rank 2: Ren Tanaka - 76 points.
Rank 3: Hayato Yamada - 75 points.
Rank 4: Eijiro Kirishima - 74 points.
Rank 5: Ochaco Uraraka - 73 points.
Rank 6: Ibara Shiozaki - 68 points.
Rank 7: Itsuka Kendo - 65 points.
Rank 8: Tenya Ida - 61 points.
Rank 9: Izuku Midoriya - 60 points.
Rank 10: Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu - 59 points.
The moment Hayato saw that the name of the first rank examinee was a name they were familiar with, his eyebrows rose in curiosity.
"Katsugi Bakugo? Isn't that the prideful kid we saw at the entrance?"
"Yeah, that's him. Since he got first place, that means he isn't half bad, haha."
Although they had already sensed that Bakugo was strong for his age, it was still an interesting surprise for them to see that he actually manage to steal the first place from them.
"Mm... I wonder how he managed to do it..."
Hearing Hayato, Kioko took a sip of the tea she had brewed for herself before the meeting and then answered simply.
"You and Ren being in the same testing ground played against you."
After hearing it, Ren suddenly understood.
"Ah, indeed! Because we were in the same place and the number of targets was limited, we were basically stealing points from each other. On the other hand, that Bakugo probably had no real competition so he was able to rack up as many points as he wanted."
After Ren's explanation, Hayato finally understood and laughed.
"Looks like we played ourselves hahaha! Bah! Who cares? I had fun, that's all that matters!"
As Hayato was laughing, Kioko who was still drinking her tea, looked again at the list, and this time she saw something that surprised her.
"Mm? That kid Midoriya was able to get the ninth place? How?"
Kioko's question made Ren and Hayato look at the list again and they too were surprised.
"Woah, you are right, he succeeded..."
"That skinny kid succeeded? Interesting!"
Seeing Kioko's curious gaze directed toward him, Dante smiled again and snapped his fingers, causing the air the churn again. After five seconds, a mirror appeared in the room, and soon after, the scene of Midoriya destroying the 0-point robot started to play. After the video was over, Dante quickly explained the "rescue point" system and how Midoriya's exam went. It was pointless to say that the trio was quite curious about what it saw... Kioko was particularly interested.
"This child has some serious power, in terms of pure physical strength alone, even Hayato is probably not his match."
"Yeah, if we speak of pure physical strength alone, I will need some time and training before I can get back to dishing out punches like that."
Seeing Midoriya's power, the trio was indeed surprised. Although they were strong, an attack of that magnitude would undoubtedly be dangerous for them, they weren't invincible after all, plus, the kid seemed to have no control over his power, something that Kioko brought up quickly.
"It's just like you said Dante-kun, the kid has not made that power his yet, he doesn't know how to control it... fascinating."
Ren quickly added.
"Well, the kid received that power not long ago so that explains it."
As she was watching the video again and again, a tiny flame of interest that would later grow into something beautiful discreetly sparked in Kioko's heart.
"What an interesting power, I wonder what it is exactly... it seems to be more than just a simple power-boosting quirk... How strange, I need to observe it more."
.
..
...
Seeing that his friends were done with the topic, Dante finally decided to talk about a more serious topic.
"Now that we are done with that, can you guys tell me how it was to use your powers in the real world for the first time? Were you able to use the experience you gained from the Dream World properly? Was there any problem?"
Hearing Dante's question, the trio quickly dropped their smiles and became much more serious.
The first one to answer was Ren.
"No problem on my side, I was able to use my lightning as easily as I can do it in the Dream World."
Then came Kioko.
"Same for me Dante-kun. As you said, we can use our experience to use our powers fluently, but the power output is nowhere near of what we are capable of doing in the Dream World.
And finally came Hayato's turn.
"That's true, In the Dream World, my Hirudora can easily destroy a city. Although I didn't go all out, I am pretty sure that I can only barely destroy a city block with it, and that's only if I use everything I have."
Hearing that, Dante nodded in understanding.
"I see, everything is working as intended then, good."
Just as it was explained in the past, Dante and his friends could only bring memories and experiences from the Dream World. Be it muscle memory, physical strengthening, power development, or anything other than knowledge, none of it could get out of the Dream World.
But what did that mean?
Well, that simply meant that Dante and his friends had started a new game, but this time with all the knowledge they accumulated in their previous game, making getting stronger something easier for them.
During their last decades in the Dream World, Dante and his friends had trained all their abilities to a powerful degree, and all the moves they used today were just a shadow of what they were capable of in the Dream World.
Quirks were like physical abilities, the more they were used, the stronger they would become, Dante and his friends were no exception to that. Thanks to Dante's intervention, all of their abilities could be activated by burning stamina, which meant that in a way, all of their abilities. could be considered a quirk.
For Dante and his friends, using their abilities was the same as running, the more they did it, the better their stamina and strength would get. To dumb it down, if Dante used an ability, his stamina would increase a little bit and he would get better at using the said ability, which would in turn reduce the stamina cost of the skill and make it a bit stronger.
Right now, the four of them were back to their starting point when it came to their stamina and the power output of their abilities, all they had right now was the knowledge of how to develop their powers and get stronger. That knowledge was earned after years of hard work and experimentation, all they had to do now was to follow the path they had already paved in the Dream World.
"Starting today, we must focus on training our different abilities, they are the key to our survival. Although we are stronger than the majority of the world, the villains we are going to fight have plenty of guys who are physically stronger than us. Our physical strength is something that grows every second thanks to our special bodies, all we need is time. Our different abilities are exactly there for that, they will allow us to use our physical strength to its maximum and even go beyond it to defeat foes that are physically stronger than us."
Although Dante talked a lot about physical strength, it wasn't without reason. All Might, All For One, and even Star and Stripe to an extent... All of them were what could be called the peak of power in the world of MHA, and they had shown multiple times that in this world, physical strength was of utmost importance. Plus, physical strength was the core of Dante and his friends' power, stamina was an aspect of physical strength after all.
"I was wondering Dante-kun... How strong are our enemies? Although we are far from what we can do in the Dream World, I still think that we are strong enough to deal with anything that comes our way. Looking at how you are acting now though, it's clear that you don't share my opinion... So tell us, what makes you take our enemies so seriously? What are we fighting exactly?"
After hearing Kioko's question, Dante didn't answer immediately, he got up from the chair he was sitting on and went to the window of their room to look outside, at the gorgeous view of the city.
"You are right Kioko, as of now, we can easily deal with anything that comes our way... But that won't be the case forever."
After a short pause, Dante continued.
"I'm not preparing us to fight the present, I'm preparing us to fight the future."
During the last decades, other than training like a madman, Dante had also spent a lot of time thinking and strategizing with the smartest people of the Dream World, all of it was geared toward the creation of a strong organization that would protect this world from any kind of danger.
Dante wasn't some kind of saint that would do something out of selflessness, he had reasons for doing what he was doing or what he was about to do, but that's a topic for later.
Thanks to the mistakes he made in the first few years of his second life, Dante had become someone that would only move when he was sure to have everything in control, while at the same time knowing that controlling everything was impossible.
'That's why we need strength... A strength so absurd that we can resist any drastic change that may arise because of my actions!'
In the last decades, Dante had created a plan that would completely change this world, the plan was so big that errors were bound to happen, and he knew it. Dante knew that because the actions were big, the repercussions would then be even bigger, he needed to be ready for it.
"Currently, our biggest enemy is without a doubt All For One. Right now, that guy is strong enough to destroy a city."
When they heard that, Kioko and the rest became a bit more serious... but Dante wasn't done.
"I know that for you guys, such a thing isn't worth bragging about, so let me add something...
The All For One of right now is only a shell of his former self, he should not even be half as strong as he was at his peak."
This time, Kioko and the rest finally realized what they were up against and became solemn.
"And like I said before, we are not preparing for the present, I will even add that we are not preparing for the past either... Remember, we are preparing for the future."
Dante had planned the general direction of things, but the actions he would undertake were risky and sure to create changes from the story he knew... who knew how his enemies would ride the waves of change he was about to start?
They had to be ready for that uncertain future!