10:49 AM U.A. High School, Main Lecture Hall
The lecture hall was a massive, dimly lit auditorium that smelled of floor wax and the collective nervous sweat of over a thousand examinees. Izuku and Tenya sat in the middle row, surrounded by a sea of teenagers clutching their printed orientation pamphlets like holy scriptures. Since they weren't allowed to read their pamphlets until the announcer appeared, the duo (or technically, a trio) of boys were discussing what they believed would be on the practical exam.
Suddenly, a spotlight cut through the darkness, hitting a podium on the stage.
The man who had appeared on stage was an explosion of yellow and black. He looked less like a teacher and more like a rock star. His hair was gravity-defying, and his eyes were hidden behind large, orange-tinted aviator shades. Around his neck hung a massive, high-tech directional speaker system that looked like a heavy industrial brace, and his hands were thrown wide in a manic gesture of welcome.
"WHAT'S UP, U.A. CANDIDATES! Thanks for tuning in to me, your school DJ! COME ON! AND LET ME HEAR YA!" The DJ leaned forward, cupping a gloved hand to his ear.
"…."
Only a pressurized silence met him. A single, nervous cough echoed from the back of the room.
"Keeping it mellow, huh?!" The blond hero pointed a finger at the crowd, undeterred. "That's fine! I'll skip straight to the main show! Let's talk about how this practical exam is gonna go down, okay!"
"ARE YOU READY!? The announcer then struck another dynamic pose, hoping someone in the crowd would speak up.
"…."
But only silence met him again.
"Of course, it was Present Mic, out of all the pro heroes to MC this exam," Wasuke whispered from a mouth on Izuku's cheek. "I'm surprised I didn't recognize his annoying voice through the intercom earlier. That stupid radio show of his is played on every street corner."
"Wasuke," Iida hissed, his hands already beginning their rhythmic, 90-degree chopping. "That is disrespectful to Present Mic's work, and it is highly improper to converse during this part of the entrance exam!"
"I will stop talking when he has something actually important to yap about."
A massive digital screen then appeared behind Present Mic, flickering to life with a map of all of the battle centers listed A-G as he spread his arms. "As your application said, today you rockin' boys and girls will be out there conducting ten-minute mock battles in super-hip urban settings! GIRD YOUR LOINS, MY FRIENDS! AFTER I DROP THE MIC HERE, YOU'LL HEAD TO YOUR SPECIFIED BATTLE CENTER, SOUND GOOD?!"
"…."
"OKAAAAYYYYYYYY?!"
Izuku looked down at his card. Examinee: 7112, Battle Center: G. The pink-haired boy then glanced at Iida's. Examinee: 7111, Battle Center: B.
Tenya adjusted his glasses, looking between the two cards. "Strange, we're going to be split up so far apart, even though our examinee numbers are one after the other."
"That's a smart move," Izuku replied as he put his upper left hand on his chin. "The practical exam tests individual merit. If students from the same background team up, their scores wouldn't reflect their own individual abilities as examinees, and actual qualified examinees could lose their spots in the hero course. However, I'm guessing we're so far apart because I'm technically a homeschool applicant, and the old geezer almost forgot to submit my registration until the very last minute. Either way, we would have been placed in different sectors, one apart from the other, regardless."
"That's such a shame," Iida said with a sigh. "I was interested in what your quirk would look like in action."
"I guess you're just going to have to pass the final exam to see," Wasuke stated with a confident smirk.
"I guess so," Iida replied with a smile.
On stage, the screen changed to show silhouettes of four different robots with a miniature city model in the center.
"OKAY, OKAY, LET'S CHECK OUT YOUR TARGETS!" Present Mic shouted, pointing a finger at the screen. "There are three types of faux villains in every battle center! You'll earn points based on their level of difficulty, SO BETTER LISTEN CAREFULLY AND CHOOSE WISELY!"
"FIRST UP! THE ONE-POINTERS! These lean, mean fighting machines are what you kiddos would call the fodder enemies on the battlefield. They are spindly, bipedal scouts with a single large red sensor eye for a head and a light chassis. They aren't much for defense, SO TAKE 'EM DOWN FAST!"
"NEXT! THE TWO-POINTERS! A bit more junk in the trunk and a lot more fight! These slightly harder baddies have a long, insectoid profile with elongated, reaching arms and a hunched posture. They'll require a bit more 'oomph' to shut down!"
"AND FINALLY! THE THREE-POINTERS! THE MINI BOSSES ON THIS EXAM! LOOK AT THESE ABSOLUTE UNITS! They're built like heavy-duty tanks, rolling on massive treads with a broad, armored upper body. They feature dual-sensor arrays that look like multiple glowing eyes and wide, powerful arms designed to crush anything in their path! SMASH 'EM AND YOU'LL RACK UP YOUR SCORE BIG TIME, LISTENERS!"
The screen at the top then zooms in on the city, showing a pixelated version of Present Mic stopping the robots and earning points.
"Your goal in this trial is to use your quirk to raise your score by shredding these faux villains like A MID-SONG GUITAR SOLO or hit their kill-switches to make them DROP LIKE THE MIC! BUT CHECK IT! MAKE SURE YOU KEEP THINGS HEROIC! Attacking other examinees is a U.A. no-no, YA DIG?!"
As the Voice Hero finished his explanation, a transformation occurred in Izuku. A massive smile spread across his face—not the innocent grin of a child, but the malicious, toothy smile of a feral animal in delight.
U.A.'s secret practical exam was better than Izuku could dream of. Not only was the exam a test of how many opponents the examiees could take down, but their opponents were robots. This meant that Izuku and Wasuke, for the first time since they were twelve years old, didn't have to hold back while fighting in the Underground Masquerade. For ten minutes, he was permitted to be a monster. No wonder the detective and the old man forbade the twins from training their quirks for the last 10 months. If they had more time to prepare for the practical, the exam would be over in seconds. Izuku could only smile at how easy it was going to be to get into U.A.
Izuku began to chuckle to himself as a low, resonant curse energy leaked out of the boy, causing the examinees in the neighboring seats to flinch and pull away, unnerved by the four-armed giant's sudden glee.
"Izuku!"
"Huh," Izuku snapped back to reality. Wasuke silently thanked god that the blue-haired boy had saved their already-strained reputation.
"Can you believe this?!" Iida then shoved his pamphlet into the four-armed boy's face. "Present Mic stated there are only three types of faux villains, but there are clearly four listed on this document! How could a prestigious institution like U.A. permit such a glaring error?!
Izuku looked closely at the pamphlet that had been UNCEREMONIOUSLY shoved into his face. He scanned the details, noticing a small bit of text Iida had overlooked in his plight.
"Don't worry about it, Tenya," Izuku said in a clearly irritated tone. "He is probably going to get to it later."
"He has clearly forgotten about it!" Iida lamented. "How can you let him continue with such a mistake!?"
"If it troubles you so much," Izuku remarked with a slick grin, "then you should tell him of it yourself."
"A magnificent idea, Izuku! Thank you!"
Tenya stood up in the middle of the row, his hand shooting up like a piston, interrupting the pro-hero. "EXCUSE ME! I HAVE A QUESTION!"
"This is going to be good," Wasuke whispered to Izuku.
Present Mic then pointed his finger at the student. "HIT ME!"
Suddenly, a light shone down onto Iida, making him the center of attention.
"On the printout, you've listed four types of villains. Not three. With all due respect, if this is an error on official U.A. grounds, it is shameful." Tenya then continued. "We are exemplary students. We expect the best from Japan's most notable school, and such a discrepancy is unacceptable!"
"ALRIGHT, ALRIGHT. Examinee number: 7111! While I appreciate you for calling in your request, if you were ACTUALLY PAYING ATTENTION TO THE PRESENTATION OR READ YOUR PAMPHLET PROPERLY, you would realize WHY I left it out and that I was just about to get to it BEFORE you interrupted me!"
"PARDONNNNNN?!" Iida gasped
A few students chuckled. The boy with the bird head in the row ahead glanced back, and three behind Izuku, the blonde boy from the gate, Bakugou, let out a sharp, mocking scoff.
"AS I WAS SAYING, THE FOURTH VILLAIN TYPE IS A ZERO POINTER! That guy's just an obstacle we'll be throwing in your way!" The screen then zoomed back into the city with Pixel Mic running away from the robot. "There's one in every battle center! Think of it as a hurdle you should try to avoid! It's not that it can't be beaten, but there's kind of no point in it! I RECOMMEND MY ACTUAL LISTENERS TRY TO IGNORE IT AND FOCUS ON THE ONES TOPPING THE CHARTS!"
Present Mic leaned forward, his shades glinting. "Now, examinee 7111, are there any more questions you wanted to ask me before you interrupt me again?!"
The student body erupted into laughter at Iida's expense. Tenya bowed deeply, his face a brilliant shade of crimson. "NO, SIR! I APOLOGIZE FOR THE INTERRUPTION! THANK YOU VERY MUCH!"
He sat back down, his engines whirring in embarrassment. Wasuke began to snicker audibly while Izuku maintained a small, self-satisfied smile.
"It's not that funny," Iida whispered, staring at his knees.
"Perhaps next time you shouldn't shove your filthy paper into my face," Izuku murmured. "If you had looked more closely, you would have seen the disclaimer telling you to avoid it."
Tenya looked stunned. Then, he was reminded of two things in that moment: One, Izuku was a reformed villain, and two, Izuku Torino was incredibly petty.
"THAT'S ALL I GOT FOR YOU TODAY! I'LL SIGN OFF WITH A LITTLE PRESENT!" Present Mic screamed. "A SAMPLE OF OUR SCHOOL MOTTO! As General Napoleon Bonaparte once laid down, 'A true hero overcomes life's misfortunes!' Mm-Hm! Now that's a tasty soundbite!"
Mic lowered his glasses, his eyes gleaming. "Are you ready to go beyond?!"
"LET'S HEAR A PLUS ULTRA!"
"…."
"Jeez, tough crowd," Mic muttered, rubbing the back of his neck. "WELL, GOOD LUCK, HOPE YOU PRACTICE HITTING MORE THAN JUST BOOKS!"
11:10 AM, Battle Center Bus Stops
Izuku stood near the boarding area for Battle Center G, stripping off his charcoal hoodie. He folded it neatly and shoved it into his duffel bag, revealing his white thermal shirt. The thin fabric clung to his massive frame, and through it, the dark, swirling ink of his tattoos was clearly visible, marking him as something far more dangerous than an average student.
Tenya approached him in a blue jumpsuit amid the crowd of students boarding their respective buses, his usual rigid posture softened by a look of genuine regret.
"Izuku," Tenya began, adjusting his glasses. "I must apologize for what I did in the lecture hall. Shoving my pamphlet into your face earlier was unbecoming of a future hero. It was a careless disregard for your personal space and surroundings, and for that, I am truly sorry."
Izuku placed a massive hand on Iida's shoulder, his grip firm and grounding. "Forget the hall, Tenya. I got my entertainment for the day from watching you embarrass yourself in front of a pro hero. Consider us even."
'I wouldn't exactly call that being even,' Wasuke thought to himself. 'But hey, whatever keeps the Boy Scout happy.'
"Now that we have cleared the air, let us address the real topic at hand."
"Hmm?" Izuku raised an eyebrow, curious as to what Iida's intense mind had cooked up now.
Tenya pointed his finger at Izuku, his eyes flashing with a competitive fire that Izuku hadn't seen since their first spar. "I, Tenya Iida, challenge you, Izuku Torino! To a wager for the practical exam!"
Izuku let out a low chuckle. "A wager? First the paper and now this, you're certainly getting bold, Tenya." Izuku then gave the blue-haired boy his full attention. "Now then, tell me the terms of this wager."
"Simple!" Tenya declared. "During the practical, whoever secures the highest score shall be the victor! And the winner gets to make exactly one request of the loser—whatever they wish, provided it is within the bounds of the law, of course!"
"A tempting offer," Izuku replied, his upper right hand rubbing his chin. "But how exactly am I meant to pay you back if you win? I possess no cash of my own after all."
"You're just going to have to figure that out, won't you?" Tenya said with a confident smirk, turning toward the bus for Battle Center B. He waved a hand over his shoulder. "Good luck, Izuku! I expect to see you at the top of the charts! Do not let me down!"
As Iida left, Wasuke then talked to Izuku in his soul. "Well, you heard him, Izuku. We can't let Glasses get one over us."
"Right," Izuku replied, walking toward the bus for Battle Center G. "You ready to decimate the practical?"
"Always"
Izuku then stepped onto the bus, his four eyes fixed on the distant, walled-off mock city. Their final test was ready to begin.
11:17 AM, Bus to Battle Center G
The inside of the transport bus was a chamber of anxiety. The hum of the engine was barely audible over the sound of heavy breathing and the rhythmic tapping of nervous feet. For most, this was the culmination of years of their elementary-school dreams. For Izuku, it was the start of a ten-minute window to ensure his freedom.
He sat in the back corner, his massive frame forced into a cramped, unnatural posture. The bus was designed for standard builds, not for a six-foot-eight titan. However, even restricted, his presence was a physical weight that pushed against the air. The four-armed boy sat with the same malicious smile on his face as in the lecture hall, making some of the already-nervous examinees piss their pants. Normally, Izuku would analyze his competitors with his soul-piercing glance, as he did at the Underground Masquerade, but today, the four-eyed boy didn't even bother. He didn't even look at them. Why would he worry about something so trivial if he couldn't even imagine a possibility of him not making it into the hero course in the first place?
"Izuku, quit it," Wasuke pleaded from the sanctuary of their soul domain to avoid other examinees learning about his brother's quirk. "You're smiling like the mad doctor in Human Earthworm 4. I don't want some kid to have a heart attack and reach the pearly gates instead of the U.A. ones."
"My apologies," Izuku said earnestly, a faint smirk tugging at his lips. "I couldn't help myself. After hearing the parameters of this exam, our victory is practically guaranteed."
Wasuke sighed, a confident grin spreading across his face. "Yeah, I guess you're right. We're going to be practically unstoppable during the exam, especially because of that binding vow."
Then, Wasuke's smile faded, replaced by a sharp, serious glare. "Still, we need an actual strategy. We can't just go throwing slashes around blindly, or we'll end up failing before we even start."
"Don't worry, brother. I already have a plan," Izuku declared smoothly. "We aren't just going to pass. We are going to slaughter all 150 robots and claim every last point for ourselves."
11:28 Battle Center G
"This is nuts..."
"It's like an entire city!"
"Can you imagine how much money U.A. spent building a place like this?"
"Man, U.A. is unbelievable!"
Rising from the concrete plaza were the imposing perimeter walls of Battle Center G—a massive, sixty-foot barrier of industrial grey steel topped with reinforced security sensors and thick surveillance booms. Standard iron gates stood shut at the center, locking away the mock metropolis within. Beyond the barrier loomed a sprawling, hyper-realistic cityscape: rows of towering office buildings, residential apartments, concrete overpasses, and narrow alleyways, all built to a perfect 1:1 scale. It felt less like a testing facility and more like an abandoned metropolis waiting for a war.
Izuku finally ducked out of the transport bus. His six-foot-eight frame had forced him into the very back row, cramped into a seat clearly not built for someone with four arms and his prehistoric muscle density. As he stepped onto the concrete plaza, he raised his arms behind his head into a deep cow-face stretch while extending his lower arms across his chest into a cross-body shoulder stretch, working out the stiffness in his body.
"Finally... we're out," Izuku muttered as he cracked his neck with his hand. "It was suffocating back there. I can't believe that's the only seating option the rodent provided for heteromorphs. Now then, Wasuke, do you recall the plan, or do I have to repeat every detail for you once more?"
"Yeah, yeah, I remember," Wasuke's mouth grumbled from a small jaw manifested on Izuku's cheek. "Excuse me for not being a natural Jujutsu genius like you."
"Good," Izuku replied smoothly, choosing not to acknowledge his brother's sarcasm. "Now then. Let us secure our position at the front of the line"
Without a care in the world, Izuku strode toward the dense crowd gathered before the unopened gates. He moved carelessly, shoving through the shoulders of his fellow competitors with his immense physical strength, plowing through the anxious teenagers to claim what he viewed as his god-given position at the front of the pack.
"Hey!"
"Ouch!"
"Watch where you are going!"
The complaints fell on deaf ears until a broad, muscular hand slammed firmly onto Izuku's left upper shoulder.
"Hey, you!"
Izuku halted. He slowly turned his head, his four eyes slanting downward to glare at the intruder. Standing behind him was a burly, thick-lipped examinee with spiky brown hair, clad in a white T-shirt saying "SUGAR" and black sweatpants. The boy's built physique was impressive, but his expression was full of righteous frustration.
"I want you to stop cutting the line," the brown-haired test-taker stated, gesturing toward the irritated crowd in the back.
"And why should I concern myself with what other people think?" Izuku countered.
"Because they got here first, man. Come on, man—I get that everyone wants to pass this exam, but that doesn't mean we can't keep things fair."
SLAP
With a sharp flick of his lower arm, Izuku slapped the boy's hand off his shoulder.
"I arrived at the bus first, yet I was forced into the back due to my size. Had the bus been designed with EVERYONE in mind, I would have been at the front of the line and the first through these doors. Now tell me, boy—does that strike you as 'fair' to me, or to any other heteromorph taking this test?"
The white-shirted participant raised both hands defensively, taking a half-step back. "Woah, man! I didn't mean to imply anything like—"
Before he could finish, a heavy pneumatic hiss echoed across the plaza. The massive steel gates of Battle Center G unlatched and began swinging open.
While the rest of the examinees hesitated, waiting for an official signal, Izuku reacted instantly!
He vaulted cleanly over the brown-haired boy and the surrounding crowd, launching himself toward the opening gap. The moment his black-and-red shoes touched the pavement inside, he channeled cursed energy into his legs and shot into the mock city like a pink-haired hurricane.
FWOOSH
'Dang, he's quick!' the brown-haired boy thought, watching in shock as the four-armed giant tore down the main avenue before the announcer had even spoken. "WAIT, DUDE, YOU HAVE TO WAIT FOR PRESE—!"
"Leave him be," a flat, tired voice interrupted from his right.
The thick-lipped student turned to see a tall, slender candidate with messy purple hair and deep eye bags, calmly shaking his head.
"Man, are all powerful quirk users like this?" The purple-haired boy asked no one in particular. "Either way, that's one less competitor to deal with."
Meanwhile, Izuku surged straight into the heart of the sector. He could feel his body overflowing with a torrent of Cursed Energy—a dormant power exploding back to life after ten agonizing months of suppressing it. Even if Izuku was overflowing with negative emotions, it was overcome by the relief of being whole again.
'Just as I thought,' Izuku mused, a sharp smirk spreading across his face. 'None of those simpletons paid attention to the fine print in the pamphlet. Had they looked closely, they would know the practical begins the moment the gates open—there is no countdown in a real battle after all! Perfect! That gives us a head start to begin racking up points!'
Rounding a corner into a broad intersection, Izuku spotted his first targets: a formation of fifteen faux villains clumped together in the middle of the boulevard. The group was a mixed unit consisting of seven One-Pointers, five Two-Pointers, and three Three-Pointers.
Izuku's smile widened into a predatory grin. "Wasuke! Are you ready?!"
"Hell yeah!" his brother barked from his cheek, matching his grin. "Let's see just how rusty we really are!"
Izuku dug his heels into the asphalt, sliding thirty feet across the pavement with enough momentum to spin a full 360 degrees toward the machines. Stopping dead in his tracks right in front of the unit, the twins raised Izuku's upper right arm and made a sharp, slicing motion, shouting in unison:
"DISMANTLE!"
It wasn't just a slash; it was a localized catastrophe.
The moment the chant cleared their lips, the visual space between Izuku and the horizon tore open. A crescent blade of distorted air erupted across the entire three-hundred-foot width of the street.
The fifteen faux villains didn't just break—they ceased to exist as solid matter. Before their sensors could even register a target, the wave hit them, atomizing their armor plates, hydraulic fluids, and steel skeletons into a fine metallic dust that blew outward in a ring of supersonic air.
And the slash kept going.
The blade ripped straight down the main avenue, carving a three-foot-deep trench into the concrete roadbed like a plow through soft earth. It tore cleanly through four entire city blocks of commercial districts. Skyscrapers, glass towers, overpasses, and steel billboards were bisected in a single microsecond along a perfectly straight horizontal line.
For two agonizing seconds, the world went completely silent.
Then, the world caught up.
BOOM
A deafening roar shattered the sky as the top halves of a dozen multi-story mock buildings began to slide smoothly off their lower foundations. Millions of tons of steel, concrete, and glass crashed downward in slow motion, tumbling into the street in a massive, churning avalanche of debris. The shockwave blew out every window for half a mile and sent a mushrooming wall of dust skyward, blotting out the midday sun over half of Battle Center G.
At the entrance gates blocks away, the ground shook violently enough to knock several waiting examinees off their feet.
In the epicenter of the cloud, Izuku stood tall, his upper arm still extended, four eyes glowing like embers in the fog of pulverized concrete.
Wasuke let out a stunned, breathy laugh from Izuku's cheek, his spectral eyes wide in disbelief. "Holy shit... Izuku, guess we're a lot rustier than we thought! I thought we were just aiming for fifteen of those clankers, not deleting three whole zip codes!"
Izuku slowly flexed his upper fist, feeling the wild, unrefined surge of the immense cursed energy settling into his veins. His four eyes narrowed as he assessed the colossal trench cutting through the dead city.
"This result was inevitable." Izuku rumbled, his voice echoing over the thunderous groans of collapsing buildings. "Due to our agreement with the police and our binding vow, our fine-tuned synchronization has decayed. We put far too much momentum into that slash"
Deep within the dust storm, red sensor lights began to ignite by the dozens. Alerted by the seismic shockwave, mechanical treads roared, and heavy steel legs clattered as swarms of Faux Villains flooded in from surrounding sectors to investigate the zone of destruction.
Izuku dropped into a low, ancient fighting stance, his four arms flared and crackling with blue atmospheric energy.
"Now then, Wasuke... let's get back into practice."
11:27, U.A. Control Room
The observation gallery of the central control room was swallowed in a low, blue-tinted gloom, illuminated only by the immense grid of high-definition monitors that stretched across the curved forward wall. Below, rows of plush operator seats were occupied by the faculty, their faces bathed in the cool light of dozens of camera angles tracking the mock cites. Above them, perched on an elevated mezzanine behind soundproofed, one-way security glass, stood the sharp silhouettes of officials from the Hero Public Safety Commission—silent, immaculate, and watching the proceedings like wardens overlooking a courtyard.
The heavy pressurized doors hissed open, and a painfully gaunt man stumbled inside, frantically wrestling his long, skeletal arms into the sleeves of an oversized yellow suit jacket. Beneath the billowing coat, a loose-fitting white dress shirt with a blue tie hung off his sunken clavicles, swallowed by yellow trousers that bunched at the waist.
"I am terribly sorry for the wait, everyone!" his dry, wheezing voice cracked across the room. "BUT I AM FINALLY HERE!"
"Cutting it close, aren't you?" grunted a massive, broad-shouldered man with chalk-white hair and a face dominated by a wide, toothy jawline. He crossed his thick arms over his chest, his blood-red hero suit. "I realize the duties of the Symbol of Peace never truly rest, but school is about to start. Once the term begins, MY students will be relying on YOU to be punctual."
"I know, I know," the skeletal man murmured sheepishly, ducking his head as he shuffled toward his assigned console. "I'm sorry. It will not happen again. It's just that… I got caught up in something."
"Now, now, let us not reprimand our Number One Hero just yet," piped a cheerful, high-pitched voice from the central chair. A creature that appeared to be an impossible chimera of dog, mouse, and bear—impeccably dressed in a tailored three-piece suit with a neat red tie and a thin, jagged scar splitting his right eye—sipped tea from a porcelain cup. "After all, he is not the latest arrival today."
The sunken-eyed man blinked in bewilderment. 'Someone arrived after me?!'
The automatic door slid open once more without a sound. Eraser Head stepped into the control room, his dark form casting a long shadow against the tile. His mouth was set in a frown, and his eyes were a ghastly, blood-veined disaster—raw, unblinking, and with a look of someone who had spent hours of doomscrolling on their phone until their eyes went red.
The skeletal hero nearly choked on his own spit. 'I GOT HERE BEFORE HIM!?'
"WOW, Eraser!" the blond radio host crowed, leaping to his feet and shoving a smartphone camera into his colleague's exhausted face. "After all those lectures you gave about discipline, YOU'RE the slacker holding up the main event! Man, this is priceless! I can't wait to show the upperclassmen what their terrifying homeroom teacher looks like when he oversleeps—"
"Don't you have somewhere else to be, Yamada," Eraser Head muttered, his voice scraping out like sandpaper over rust.
"He's got you there, partner," drawled a figure slouched in the row behind, tipping back a wide-brimmed brown Stetson. Beneath the brim, a brown metal plate mask gleamed in the monitor light, a long red western duster draped over his shoulders. "Better skedaddle up to the roof before them kids start milling around down there like chickens without heads."
"You guys are no fun!" Present Mic scoffed with a theatrical pout, turning on his heel to scamper up the gantry ladder towards the roof of the control tower, preparing to yell at the examinees.
Eraser Head dropped heavily into an empty swivel chair beside a woman whose tailored costume consisted of a skintight, white-and-black bodysuit accented with domino cuffs and sheer black tights. A domino mask framed her sultry, heavy-lidded eyes as she leaned close, dark hair spilling over her shoulder.
"I'm surprised you're the one who's late, Shota.' The woman whispered into his ear. "What happened to your eyes? Did you overwork your quirk during the written exam?"
"I was reviewing security footage of an examinee," he said flatly, keeping his gaze locked on the central screens. "I lost track of time."
The woman's lips parted in a dramatic gasp, one gloved hand rising to press against her collarbone as a shiver ran down her frame. "A student dared to cheat in YOUR presence? How utterly scandalous! And yet... HOW BOLD!"
Eraser Head didn't even blink. "How did you survive your rookie years without ending up like Captain Celebrity?"
She offered a breathy laugh, tossing her voluminous hair over her shoulder with an exaggerated pose. "Natural feminine charm, darling."
"Did your investigation yield any results, Aizawa?"
Both teachers stiffened slightly as the small animal in the suit spoke without turning away from the displays, his paws resting neatly on his armrests.
"Not yet, Principal Nezu," Eraser Head replied, his jaw tightening. "The boy knows how to obscure his tracks. But if he cheated in the exam, I will uncover it. Charlatans have no place in this institution."
A quiet hum settled over the room as the countdown clock in the corner struck zero.
"The gates are opening," the principal noted.
On the panoramic screens, the steel barriers of the seven mock sectors began to retract with a low mechanical groan. While hundreds of nervous teenagers remained rooted to the pavement at the thresholds, the screens suddenly flickered with violent motion. In Battle Center B, engines flared to life as a bespectacled boy with blue hair bolted through the gate like a missile. Simultaneously, on the feed for Battle Center G, a six-foot-eight behemoth vaulted clear over a cluster of examinees and hit the asphalt in an explosive, bounding sprint.
"TWO CANDIDATES ACTUALLY FIGURED IT OUT?!" roared a burly hero whose entire head was covered by a canine muzzle brace, spittle flying as he slammed a heavy paw onto his desk. "WE HAVEN'T HAD A SINGLE ONE GRASP THE REAL-TIME START RULE IN OVER SIX YEARS!"
Beside him, a diminutive man encased in a thick yellow, metallic digging helmet with massive black eyes tapped a series of keys with mechanical fingers. "Well, well. It's been a while since we've had to pull this lever." He struck a flashing yellow button. "I just signaled Mic to delay the official start of the exam by thirty seconds. Their initiative deserves a head start."
"Fascinating," observed a gentle, towering figure whose face and broad shoulders were carved from sheer, unyielding grey stones. His stoic eyes tracked the feeds. "I am unsure whether to be more astonished that an Iida exploited a technicality, or that the boy in Battle Center G is outpacing him entirely."
Eraser Head's gaze narrowed to pinpricks, his lips curling into a vicious scowl as he glared at the camera tracking Battle Center G.
The woman in the mask leaned forward, resting her chin on her palm. "Ah. So that is your problem child. I can see why you suspect him of playing dirty. For someone with that kind of raw physical speed, the boy must have ignored his academics entirely to hone that toned body of his."
The masked gunslinger clicked a mouse, pulling up the candidate's registry card. "File says his name is Izuku Torino."
At the back of the room, the gaunt, blond hero froze, a violent shudder wracking his spine.
The stone-faced teacher tilted his head back toward him. "Torino? Isn't that the surname of your retired mentor?"
"That… That would explain his absurd speed," the skeletal man whispered, his trembling fingers clutching the edge of his oversized collar as cold sweat beaded on his temple."Why, of all times, am I hearing his name now? Does he know about…?"
Before the skeletal hero could piece the thought together, the four-armed boy came to a halt thirty feet from an entire group of mechanical villains and swept his upper arm forward.
A silent crescent of distorted space tore across the screen. The feed glitched as the strike cleaved through the fifteen forward units in a blink, slicing straight through the foundations of three city blocks behind them. Office towers, overpasses, and steel structures sheared in two, sliding off their bases and collapsing into a massive avalanche of concrete and dust.
The audio feeds dissolved into static as the tremors rattled the observation room. Falling debris instantly crushed another nine Two-Pointers, impaled a dozen One-Pointers, and detonated four heavy Three-Pointers in a chain reaction of destruction.
The automated ledger beside Battle Center G spun in a wild blur:
IZUKU TORINO
VILLAIN POINTS: 74
HERO POINTS: 0
"WHAT… THE HELL KIND OF QUIRK IS THAT?!" the canine hero barked, his claws digging into the armrests. "A LONG-RANGE SLASHING QUIRK?! HE LEVELED HALF OF THE—THE ENTIRE—HRRR-AWOOOOOOO!" His words collapsed entirely under the severe case of shock.
"That wasn't a normal attack," muttered the masked marksman, his southern drawl completely vanishing under raw disbelief. "The squirt almost hit as hard on his opening move as All Might did during his exam!"
"Why didn't Gran Torino recommend him for the hero course?!" a tall, trench-coated figure gasped in disbelief, his peg-leg prosthetics clicking against the floor as he staggered back from the monitors, the circular eyes of his black mask widening in shock. "He's far too powerful for the general exam!"
In the shadows of the back row, the skeletal hero stood dead still, his hollow, darkened eye sockets wide with sheer, suffocating dread. His stomach turned to ice. It reminded him of a familiar signature of a power that operated without morality—a brutal, sovereign force that ripped through reality like the ancient nightmare he had fought so desperately to bury.
Above the teachers, behind the soundproofed security glass of the observation mezzanine, the representatives from the Hero Public Safety Commission lost their practiced composure.
The lead agent, who had spent the entire morning standing ramrod straight with a tablet tucked under his arm, lunged forward until both hands slammed against the reinforced pane. His fingers left smears of nervous sweat on the glass as his eyes darted across the ruined landscape of Batter Center G.
Behind him, several aides frantically began tapping into encrypted databases, stylus pens clattering against screens.
"Run the threat assessment again," the lead agent commanded, his voice tight, stripping away his calm bureaucratic facade. "Verify his quirk registration. Is that an unregistered spatial distortion quirk? A pressure-based mutation? Did he use a quirk enchantment drug? How was power of that magnitude cleared for the general entrance exam without the commission's oversight?"
"There's almost nothing here, sir," the assistant stammered, hands trembling against the glowing terminal. "The only cleared data we have is that Candidate 7112 possesses a 'slashing/energy' quirk... and that he was recently placed under the legal guardianship of the retired Pro Hero, Gran Torino."
The agent's jaw clenched as he stared down at the monitor showing Candidate 7112 calmly standing amidst the dust. "A hetermorph like that on the field isn't an examinee taking a test. That is an uncaged disaster waiting to strike. We can not let a monster like that pass the exam."
Down in the center of the room, the small mammal in the suit did not blink. He set his teacup down into its saucer with a gentle, porcelain clink, his black bead eyes fixed on the screen where Izuku stood, four arms flared, waiting for the next wave.
'So this is the power of Ryomen Sukuna,' Nezu watched in awe. 'The footage from his clash with Gran Torino in Hosu showed nothing close to this level of catastrophic force—and under the strict terms of his police plea deal and the watchful eye of Gran Torino, he wouldn't have been able to improve his quirk at all by training. "How, then, did Izuku Torino achieve such monstrous power
Flashback, Ten Months Ago, April 6th, 9:32 PM, Izuku's Room, Yamanashi Prefecture
'What a pain,' Izuku thought as he lay flat on his futon.
After Gran Torino had finally finished berating the twins for provoking the Weapon Gang at the restaurant, he had sentenced them to an early bedtime with a threat: "You two better get some sleep, because tomorrow I'm gonna work your asses so hard you'll wish you were locked up in Tartarus!" Izuku, being a man with years of experience, knew that when a veteran hero like Gran Torino made a threat, he intended to deliver. There was, however, one problem...
"HONKKKKKKK-SCHHRRRRR-PFFFFFT-KSSSSHHHHH….KHAAAAAAA-ZZZZZZZZT!"
'Will this senile old bat ever cease his snoring?!' Izuku thought, glaring at the dark ceiling and wondering what heinous act he had committed to deserve this torture.
…Scratch that. What hadn't he done in his past lives to deserve it?
As the four-armed boy reflected on his past lives and lamented his current misery, he took a deep, centering breath, closing his four eyes to block out the noise from the world outside.
"Izuku...?" Wasuke's voice called softly from the mouth on the boy's stomach.
"...Yes, brother?" Izuku replied, an edge of annoyance in his voice.
In a heartbeat, Izuku's consciousness shifted down into the deep, quiet sanctuary of their shared soul-domain. Wasuke stood nearby, looking uncharacteristically dejected as he rubbed his own arm.
"Can we talk?" Wasuke asked.
Izuku realized that something was genuinely troubling his younger brother. He folded his arms across his chest, his expression shifting from annoyance to serious focus. "State your problem, Wasuke."
"I–I am worried about the practical exam," Wasuke admitted, staring down at his feet.
Izuku raised an eyebrow. "Explain."
"During our fight with the Weapon Gang earlier," Wasuke began, his tone heavy with hesitation, "I saw how coordinated you were. You controlled the entire restaurant without breaking a sweat. But even though we weren't hit after the first bullet, it took you so much longer to disable them without my slashes."
"I noticed that as well," Izuku agreed. "How does that relate to the practical exam?"
Wasuke let out a long, shameful sigh. "I'm worried we're gonna fail the practical because of me! Alright?! Izuku, you've been fighting your whole damn life. Even if you don't train for ten months, you will be fine. But we have spent years training together to use Shrine in perfect sync! What if, ten months from now, our slashes are too weak to eviscerate an obstacle? Or worse... what if we lose control and accidentally slice an examinee in half?! All of our hard work would be wasted again! Because of me!"
"I see." The elder brother finally understands his sibling's plight. "And we can't train with Shrine at all because here we are not bound together, and Gran Torino would definitely notice us sneaking out to use our quirk, going against our deal and throwing us in prison."
Wasuke looked down, shaking his head in defeat at the dead end.
"Then how about we use this to our advantage?"
"Huh?" Wasuke looked up to see Izuku with a confident smirk spread across his face.
"All we need to do is make a binding vow," Izuku explained to his younger brother. "Since the detective and the old man forbid us from using Shrine or cursed energy reinforcement, we can just make a vow that stipulates the same thing for the next ten months until the exam starts. In exchange for these ten months, we shall demand a 250% boost to our total output for the full duration of the practical exam."
Wasuke blinked, calculating the math. "Wait a minute... why only 250%? If we're locking away our power for ten damn months, then shouldn't the benefits be greater than that?"
"Well, that's because of our plea deal," Izuku explained smoothly. "Since binding vows are about making true sacrifices for personal gain, because of our deal with the police, we would only be able to use our powers in secret; we wouldn't be losing that much. Had we been completely free individuals making this vow, the boost would easily reach 500% or beyond. But still, with 250% of our potential unleashed, we will still be godlike compared to the rest of our competition."
"Ok," Wasuke began to calm down, taking a deep breath. "Well, that answers my first concern, but what about my other one?"
Izuku tilted his head, confused. "What else were you worried about?"
"Accidentally cutting someone in half?!"
"...Ah."
Wasuke face-palmed. "Of course YOU of all people forgot that part."
"W-Well, we can just say that we can not use our slashes on people," Izuku said, clearing his throat and looking away with a rare flicker of embarrassment. "With my martial arts expertise and the vow, I am confident I could beat anyone in a close-quarters fight, with the sole exception of All Might, of course. I also have been manipulating cursed energy for years, so I can definitely hold myself back so we wouldn't kill anyone. Plus, it can also make the vow feel more justified as well."
Wasuke stared at his older brother, a breath of pure relief escaping his lungs. "I can't believe you solved the whole damn dilemma just like that. Why didn't other sorcerers in your past life do stuff like this all the time?"
"Because in the world of Jujutsu, cursed spirits and rival sorcerers strike without warning," Izuku explained, his four eyes narrowing slightly. "Most sorcerers who have stupidly forged a vow like this had to break it due to those threats, and because they broke a personal vow, they could never make a vow like that ever again."
"Now then," Izuku held out his hand. "Do you, Wasuke Torino, accept the conditions of this vow?"
Wasuke grabbed Izuku's hand, gripping it firmly. "I do."
A sudden, bone-chilling wave of Cursed Energy washed over their shared soul. Both Izuku and Wasuke looked up into the darkness, seeing an additional set of chains form on top of their souls.
"Phew," Wasuke sighed, letting go of Izuku's hand as the heavy weight settled into his soul. He chuckled, looking up at his brother. "Now that that's settled... you probably shouldn't get into any more fights, you damn masochist."
Izuku grunted, his consciousness returning to his physical body on the futon as the old man's snoring roared through the floorboards once more.
'Whatever,' Izuku thought, closing his eyes against the noise. 'Why would I ever risk getting in trouble with the old man again?'
Izuku ended up fighting Tenya Iida in the living room the very next day.
Present Day
"Just as I suspected," Izuku murmured, settling into a low stance as the dense ring of faux villains closed in around him. "These machines react to sound. I figured that damn principal would want as many people acquiring points as possible, so he designed these fake villains to gather in areas with lots of examinees."
A manic grin split the pink-haired boy's face as treads ground against pavement and heavy steel gears whirred into overdrive. "However, I doubt he expected one student to attract this big of a crowd!"
The perimeter flared with gunfire. Barrels tracking his silhouette discharged a hail of heavy training rounds and pressurized rockets aimed straight at the conjoined examinee. Izuku didn't flinch. He didn't retreat, nor did he raise his guard; the sheer density of cursed energy boiling off his frame deflected the incoming gunfire like raindrops against plated armor.
He drove off his back foot, closing the distance to the nearest One-Pointer before its targeting reticle could adjust. Channelling power through a hip rotation, Izuku planted a straight right punch directly through the machine's reinforced chest. Metal buckled and caved inward, internal gears grinding into scrap as the frame violently imploded under the strike.
Pivoting seamlessly on the ball of his lead foot, he whipped a devastating low shin kick into the tread assemblies of two adjacent One-Pointers. The impact snapped their axles instantly, sending the steel hulks collapsing sideways into the asphalt. Without breaking his flow, Izuku sprang upward, snapping his lower arms out to catch a descending Two-Pointer by its armored shoulder mounts. Mid-air, he drove a vicious diagonal knee strike into its face, flattening the optic glass and caving the CPU bay inward until sparks sprayed the pavement.
Landing with heavy precision, he spun on his heel into a reverse roundhouse kick—a razor-sharp ushiro mawashi geri—that cleaved cleanly through the necks of three charging One-Pointers. Their severed heads went airborne, cartwheeling into the surrounding brick facades.
Behind him, twin engines roared as two scorpion-tailed Two-Pointers lunged, their mechanical stingers whistling toward his blind spot. Izuku didn't even look back. Dropping his center of gravity into a rigid horse stance, he shot his lower arms backward, catching the descending stingers mid-thrust. With a sharp twist of his forearms, he wrenched the tail joints past their tolerance points, shearing the hydraulic cables and swinging both heavy tails like flails to smash them together.
Then came the Three-Pointer.
The colossal, multi-treaded juggernaut advanced, its ground-shaking mass churning the road into gravel. Izuku's smile widened into a cruel slash. Instead of dodging the oncoming ramming plates, he stepped straight into the machine's path. His upper left hand caught the leading edge of the knight-like mask, absorbing the kinetic energy into his grounded stance, while his other three fists coiled back.
He struck in a devastating flurry of punches and hammerfists driving into its armor. Each hit pushed the armored plating deeper into the machine's core, crumpling hydraulic tubes and crushing its internal engine. He drove his lower palms into the breach, gripped its primary structural ribs, and ripped them out in savage fury. The Three-Pointer's upper turret ripped entirely free with a shriek of tearing steel. Izuku drove the jagged base of the torn turret straight down into the main battery core, detonating the rockets from the inside out and leaving the massive construct a smoking, twisted husk.
As Izuku stood amidst the burning scrap, his chest heaving with laughter, the silence was shattered by a panicked blare from the district loudspeakers:
"WHAT ARE YOU LISTENERS JUST STANDING AROUND FOR?!" Present Mic screamed, his broadcast voice cracking with genuine, flabbergasted disbelief. "THE EXAM ALREADY STARTED, AND THERE ARE LESS THAN NINE MINUTES LEFT! ARE YOU GUYS JUST GOING TO STAND AROUND DURING A REAL VILLAIN ATTACK?! GET OFF YOUR DUFFS, RUN, AND GET SOME POINTS!"
Izuku's smile settled into something cold, dark, and utterly focused. "I guess playtime is over. Wasuke, let's end this."
Inside the shared consciousness, the dormant half stirred. Izuku and Wasuke raised their opposing upper arms in tandem, fingers cocked in an identical, lethal gesture. They drew the strike back, cursed energy pooling along the edge of their knuckles, and released a wide, sweeping slash across the plaza.
SLASH
The invisible pressure wave cleaved forward, but the cut was uneven. The strike sliced cleanly through only half of the approaching swarm—nineteen One-Pointers, thirteen Two-Pointers, and seven Three-Pointers were sheared into clean, bisected halves, toppling into the street like felled timber. But the remainder of the formation stood untouched, their weapons already locking on.
"Tch," Izuku clicked his tongue, his jaw tightening in irritation. "Only half? Your timing was completely off, Wasuke. That release was pathetic."
"Don't blame me, you brat!" Wasuke's voice snarled from a mouth on Izuku's cheek, laced with venom. "If you had kept your cursed energy circulating through the entire swing instead of cutting it off right at impact, we would have cut through all of those damn clankers!"
"We need to be efficient, little brother," Izuku fired back internally, dropping his weight as the surviving units advanced. "Gran Torino has kept us on a leash for the last ten months. If we dump all our energy at once like a pair of amateurs, we would be too easy to read in U.A. We have to train being in sync again, while we have the perfect targets to practice on."
The surviving wave converged: nineteen One-Pointers, fourteen Two-Pointers, and seven heavy Three-Pointers, charging at the twins once again.
Izuku lunged forward, catching a One-Pointer's pneumatic arm mid-swing, snapping it at the elbow with a crisp palm strike, and driving his lower fist into the machine's chest. As the robot stuttered, Izuku reached down to its firing mechanism, tearing the intact heavy-caliber ammunition belt from its arm. Pouring dense, cursed energy into the brass casings until they hummed with volatile power, he flicked the projectiles manually with thumb and forefinger.
Each bullet cracked through the air faster than a sniper round. The reinforced slugs shattered the optical sensors of five approaching One-Pointers, tearing straight through their internal processors and blowing up their mainframes from within.
Before the dust settled, another One-Pointer lunged forward behind with its arm-thick shield. Izuku ducked under the charge, drove his shoulder into the machine's center mass to break its balance, and seized the shield with his upper hands. With a savage twist, he wrenched the plate entirely off the robot's frame, coated the weapon in an aura of blue energy, and hurled it edge-first like an enormous discus.
The spinning plate sliced through four consecutive Two-Pointers, shearing their legs and central columns like cardboard before burying itself three feet deep into the reinforced concrete wall of an adjacent office building.
A Two-Pointer swept its heavy steel tail around in a wide arc, aiming to sweep Izuku's legs out from under him. Izuku vaulted straight up, grabbed the heavy prehensile tail with all four hands mid-spin, and swung his body downward, using his entire mass and momentum to pull the multi-ton machine completely off its treads. Channelling cursed energy through his shoulders, he spun on his heel, using the massive robot like a colossal wrecking ball. He rotated once, twice, three times—the flailing robot obliterating six charging One-Pointers and three Two-Pointers into clouds of flying shrapnel.
The structural integrity of the swung robot gave out under the force; its main body ripped away from the joint, disintegrating against a light pole, leaving Izuku holding only the crushed tail. Without missing a beat, he hurled the severed tail like a javelin, impaling a lunging Two-Pointer straight through its optical visor and pinning it to the street.
From the rear of the swarm, one of the massive Three-Pointers leveled its heavy shoulder pod and fired a high-yield training missile directly at him.
Izuku's eyes widened with dark amusement. He didn't evade. Leaping straight toward the incoming projectile, his lower hands caught the missile's reinforced nose cone while his upper hands gripped the stabilizing fins. The blast force shoved him backward across the asphalt, rubber soles scorching the road, but he held on. Pouring his own cursed energy into the weapon's core until the warhead glowed with unstable blue light, he gave a feral, predatory laugh and hurled the primed missile right back into the center of the Three-Pointer's chest plate.
The resulting explosion was catastrophic. The concussive blast detonated the heavy machine instantly, sending a shockwave rippling through the intersection that blew three nearby Two-Pointers and four One-Pointers, leaving the entire crossroad engulfed in dense smoke and scattered fire.
From the southern access avenue, heavy footfalls signaled the arrival of the main group of examinees. At the front ran a tall, broad-shouldered boy whose skin bulged with swollen, sugar-enhanced muscle mass, his thick lips parted as he gulped down air. Behind him lagged a hunched teenager with messy indigo hair and deep, exhaustion-etched bags beneath his eyes, his breath hitching as he struggled to keep pace.
"Hey!" the buff boy shouted between ragged breaths, waving a massive arm toward the square. "Leave some for the rest of us! We need points too!"
Izuku's four fists clenched tight, his neck veins bulging beneath his tan skin. 'Leave some for you?' he thought, his chest burning with cold, incandescent disgust. 'You sluggish vermin wander in minutes late, relying on scraps from someone who actually took the initiative, and you dare to make demands of me?'
"THERE ARE SIX MINUTES AND TWO SECONDS LEFT!" Present Mic's voice blared through the district speakers.
"Wasuke! Now!" Izuku yelled, moving to secure what was rightfully his.
There was no friction this time. Their spirits snapped into seamless, singular focus. Raising their right arms simultaneously, they traced a cross-hatching pattern through the air perfectly in sync.
"DISMANTLE!"
They didn't strike the surviving robots directly. Instead, the blades cleaved horizontally through the supporting concrete columns of the multi-story buildings flanking the plaza. With terrifying accuracy, the buildings' upper stories separated cleanly from their roots. Millions of pounds of masonry, steel rebar, and architectural stone slid downward in unison, crashing into the intersection like an artificial landslide.
The remaining Faux Villains—every last One-Pointer, Two-Pointer, and Three-Pointer trapped in the clearing—were buried under tons of falling structural debris. Engines were crushed flat, fuel lines ignited beneath the weight of whole stories, and the square fell deathly silent beneath a towering cloud of chalk and grey ash.
Izuku stood atop a mound of cracked granite, four arms hanging loose at his sides, a wide, euphoric grin stretching across his soot-stained face as he surveyed the ruin.
The newly arrived examinees ground to a dead halt at the mouth of the street. The boy with the sugar quirk dropped his hands to his sides, his bulky muscles trembling as the color drained completely from his face.
"He... he destroyed all of them," the thick-lipped boy whispered, staring in dazed, hollow horror at the smoking graveyard of scrap.
"Wait! The exam's not over!" a pink-haired applicant shouted, rushing forward and grabbing the tall boy by the shoulders, shaking him desperately. "He took out the main group, but there have to be stragglers along the perimeter! U.A. has to account for rescue quirks, too—there must be hidden targets tucked away in alleys or inside buildings that aren't on the main streets!"
The bulky boy blinked, a fragile glimmer of hope returning to his wide eyes. "That... that means we still have a chance! The exam isn't over!"
As the cluster of examinees turned, scrambling frantically toward the outer boundaries of the sector, Izuku's smile vanished, replaced by an expression of venomous, twitching fury.
Izuku thought to himself. Between his opening slash, close-quarters fight, and the collapsed buildings, he had eliminated roughly 120 faux villains. In any normal exam, destroying 120 robots would shatter every historical record in U.A.'s archives. It was more than enough to secure first place. It was more than enough to ensure admission. He didn't even know for certain if the total number of robots was 150. That was just an educated guess.
He could stop here. He could let the clock bleed out, save his stamina, and allow the desperate pack behind him to scrounge up the remaining dregs to pass.
But that's how losers think!
A terrifying, razor-edged sneer split Izuku's features. With a sharp kick off the pavement, he surged toward the nearest five-story commercial building, channelling cursed energy through the soles of his black-and-red shoes. The raw pressure allowed him to run completely vertical up the sheer glass and concrete surface, his momentum carrying him upward in a defying sprint.
Without breaking stride, all four arms snapped into motion, ripping the shirt cleanly down the middle and letting the remnants flutter into the updraft. Revealing his sculpted, battle-forged muscle etched with pitch-black ritual markings that seemed to hum with malice under the open sky.
"What the fuck are you doing?!" Wasuke yelled from Izuku's chest. "We already have enough points to clear the test ten times over!"
"I don't care!" Izuku growled through bared teeth, reaching the rooftop and launching himself straight off the edge into the open sky. "I said that we would dismantle all 150 of these machines, and that is precisely what we are going to do!"
The leap was monstrous. Driven by the full output of his cursed energy, he vaulted hundreds of feet into the air, reaching an apex that cleared the highest mock skyscraper in Battle Center G. The entire fake city sprawled beneath him like a miniature architectural grid.
Izuku closed his main eyes, and across his bare torso, shoulders, and forearms, half a dozen smaller eyes snapped open beneath the skin, scanning the district in every direction at once.
"Wasuke," Izuku barked, watching the grid below. "There are only thirteen machines wandering the open streets. The rest of the faux villains are holed up inside the buildings."
"Great, and how are we supposed to locate them?" Wasuke hissed. "These tin cans don't possess cursed energy or quirks to track! We'd have to run into every single room!"
"Then we don't go into the buildings at all," Izuku said, grinning as gravity took hold and they began to plummet toward the earth. "We gut every building in the city until there's nothing left for them to hide in."
"Are you crazy?!" Wasuke screamed. "There are examinees down there! If our slashes tear through the walls, the collapsing debris will butcher half the applicants in the battle center!"
"Because of our binding vow, our slashes cannot even scratch human flesh, remember?" Izuku sneered back, his blood singing with adrenaline. "You were the one who groveled to establish that rule! And if we synchronize our cuts properly, we should only hollow out the inside of the buildings!"
"You're batshit insane!"
"No, I'm a sorcerer," Izuku shouted over the roaring wind. "We either dominate the competition, or I make us become a stain on the pavement! Make your choice, little brother!"
A beat of tense, internal silence passed as the ground rushed up to meet them.
"...Fine!" Wasuke yelled, throwing his weight behind the shared frame. "You reckless bastard, you win!"
"Three!" Izuku barked.
"Two!"
"One!"
Mid-air, the four-armed silhouette began to spin violently on its central axis, becoming a blur of motion. Using all four limbs and unleashing 120% of their remaining output of 170%, they unleashed a tempest of overlapping slashes that cascaded down upon the city below like an invisible hailstorm.
The thirteen wandering machines on the streets were instantly diced into thousand-piece showers of steel pieces. Simultaneously, the spatial blades penetrated through the roofs and window seams of every building across the sector. With surgical precision, the interior walls, steel supports, and concrete floor plates were shredded into powder, while the outer structure remained standing, trapping the implosions completely within their frames.
The onslaught tore through the remaining targets like tissue paper, tearing apart eleven One-Pointers, six Two-Pointers, and three massive Three-Pointers in an instant.
Izuku plummeted through the center of the square, hitting the intersection with a loud…
THOOM
The asphalt fractured outward in a massive spiderweb crater, kicking up a blinding wall of smoke and pulverized stone.
When the dust cleared, the four-armed boy stepped out of the crater without a single scratch on his tan skin. He walked with slow, deliberate arrogance, his eyes cold and unfeeling, with a small smile as he passed the frozen crowd.
The examinees stood entirely broken. Some dropped their support items, staring at the empty, quiet avenues with trembling lips. Others sank to the pavement, tears cutting tracks through the dust on their faces as the brutal reality set in that there was not a single robot left in the entire district. Their months of preparation, their hopes of entering the hero course, had been dismantled by a single person in less than five minutes.
Nearby, the boy with the messy purple hair collapsed to his knees, his hands digging into the cracked pavement as his head hung low in total, absolute defeat.
As Izuku walked past him, the purple-haired teenager slowly raised his head, his hollow, exhausted eyes burning with an intense, suffocating hatred.
Izuku stopped, glancing down from the corner of his eye.
"What are you looking at, worm?"
Before Izuku could take another step, a massive, sugar-swollen hand shot out, clamping tight around his throat.
The bulky boy shook with furious, tearful rage, his grip trembling against Izuku's neck as he screamed into his face:
"WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU!"
Silence smothered the observation mezzanine; both the faculty and the Commission representatives stood paralyzed. Throughout the entire exam, not a single pair of eyes—save for the hollow, shadowed gaze of the skeletal man in the rear—had dared to drift away from the central screen. Even knowing they would have to scrub through hours of archival footage later to evaluate the rest of the applicants, no one in the room could pull themselves away from the history unfolding before them.
IZUKU TORINO
VILLAIN POINTS: 250
HERO POINTS: 0
The four-armed applicant had shattered the ceiling. He had eclipsed the legendary record set decades ago by the Symbol of Peace himself: 180 points. Granted, Present Mic's stunned silence had delayed the rest of the center by more than thirty seconds, widening the lead Izuku gained from his early start, and All Might's own historic trial had been cut short when the golden prodigy wiped out a hundred points with his very first strike, felt guilty, and spent the remainder of his time gaining only Rescue Points. Yet even without those caveats, the pink-haired ward had systematically cleared the entire battle center in under five minutes flat.
"He's perfect." Nezu purred, a wide, sharp grin stretching across his snout. Beside him, his porcelain teacup sat entirely forgotten, slowly going cold. "He adapts to chaos with overwhelming speed, dismantles clusters of enemies effortlessly—not to mention manifesting eyes across his own body to hunt down the remaining stragglers, all with a smile on his face. He possesses the makings of a truly remarkable hero."
At the principal's assessment, the stocky hero in the heavy excavator helmet pushed back from his console. "Well, then. I should patch through to Mic and have him stop the exam in Battle Center G early."
"Now, hold on just a moment," Nezu intervened, raising a single paw toward the digital clock reading 11:36. "The boy still has one final hurdle to clear."
The helmeted hero gave a low nod, turning back to the main console and flipping open the glass casing over a large, illuminated red toggle marked YARUKI SWITCH. With a heavy click, his gauntleted thumb drove the button home.
Nezu turned his beady black eyes back to the feed, watching the pink-haired boy sneer down at the anrgy examinee clutching his throat.
'All Might obliterated that machine with a single blow so the other applicants could scavenge whatever points were left,'Nezu thought, his whiskers twitching with profound amusement. 'Show me what you do when the script flips on its head, Izuku Torino.'
11:35
"WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU!"
Izuku looked down at the examinee with an icy, razor-sharp malice burning in his crimson eyes. Under any ordinary circumstance, if an insect dared lay a hand on him without his consent, he would have cut them down without a second thought. But shackled by their first and recent binding vows he and Wasuke had sworn on, his cursed rage was forced into rigid annoyance.
"Remove your filthy hand from my throat, boy," Izuku commanded, his upper left eye twitching with irritation. The vise-like grip didn't bother him in the slightest; his second set of lungs near his stomach drew in steady, uninterrupted breath.
"Why should I, you freak?!" the sugar-doped boy snarled, spit flying from his thick lips as his knuckles whitened against Izuku's neck.
"Because unlike the rest of you pathetic simpletons, I actually bothered to pay attention to the instructions," Izuku retorted, his voice chillingly level. "Attacking fellow applicants during the practical exam is grounds for immediate disqualification. Squeeze any harder, and you won't even qualify for General Studies. So let go of my throat, you bloated diabetic."
The bulky boy stared into Izuku's unblinking, four-eyed glare. Shaken by the total absence of fear, he slowly retracted his trembling, oversized hand, unwilling to throw away his own shot at U.A.
"Why did you have to destroy all of them?!" The boy gestured wildly at the smoking, leveled avenue behind them, voice cracking with frantic despair. "You clearly had enough points to take first place! Why did you have to go and ruin everyone else's chances?!"
Izuku raised a clawed hand with a quiet chuckle, casually rolling his shoulders to inspect his skin. Satisfied the boy's crude grip hadn't left a mark over his black tattoos, he sneered, "Do you mistake this battlefield for a church?"
"What did you say?!" The boy bristled, balling his swollen fists.
"Do you think the world hands out food, shelter, or status simply because you beg for it?" Izuku sneered, his voice cutting through the silent avenue like cold iron. "Life is not fair. If you desire something, you seize it by your own strength, by whatever means necessary."
Izuku swept a hand across the crowd of stunned, pale-faced applicants. "Look at yourselves. I bet every single one of you sat on your asses your entire lives, not training your mediocre quirks until the very last minute, waiting for some benevolent authority to tell you what you were allowed to do. Am I wrong?"
Nobody answered. A heavy, suffocating silence fell over the avenue. Some students hung their heads in bitter shame; others glared with tear-streaked rage, but not a single voice rose to contest the four-armed boy.
"Unlike all of you, I answer to no one," Izuku said, taking a measured step forward. "I forged this body so that no sovereign on earth could dictate where I belong. Only the strong can do what they please. If your childish dream of heroism meant anything to you, you should have spent every waking second of your life preparing for this moment."
"Hey, that's not fair—-"
A monstrous, gut-wrenching tremor cut the boy off mid-sentence.
The earth buckled violently. Two entire city blocks ahead, tearing the street open in a violent spray of shattered asphalt.
Rising from the center came an absolute behemoth. The Zero-Pointer towered higher than the surrounding mock skyscrapers, an apocalyptic siege machine of dark green steel and grinding caterpillar tracks. Its crimson sensor array blazed through the smog like an infernal sun. The sonic boom from its exhaust blew the remaining windows out of neighboring buildings, casting a shadow so immense it swallowed the entire sector in twilight.
Panic ripped through the crowd. Applicants shrieked, stumbling backward over cracked curbs, their faces pale with terror as the mechanical titan raised an arm the size of a city bus, preparing to level the block.
Izuku stood amidst the fleeing crowd, his broad grin returning full force.
"Now then!" Izuku's voice boomed over the engine roar, echoing off the hollowed concrete walls. "What are you standing around for?! Claim your destiny!"
The examinees froze mid-retreat, staring at him as if he were completely unhinged.
"There must be a reason U.A. deployed this titan!" Izuku taunted, his laughter tearing through the howling wind. "Perhaps defeating it grants you a golden ticket straight into the hero course! Are you telling me you're terrified by its size? You call yourselves future heroes! Civilians are supposed to rely on your strength, yet the moment a real calamity shows its teeth, you tremble and soil yourselves!"
More examinees broke rank, turning on their heels and sprinting desperately toward the exit gates.
"Come now!" Izuku bellowed, holding out his four hands in a grand, theatrical gesture. "I'll even forfeit my own points to the first worm who steps forward! Look at my generosity! Prove to me that a single one of you deserves to be called a hero! Prove to me that I am wrong!"
A few paces away, the messy-haired boy with dark eye bags stood completely still. His pupils trembled as he stared up into the shadow of the colossal machine. Slowly, bitterly, he took a step back, lowered his eyes to the dirt, and turned away.
Izuku's gaze shifted to the sugar-doped boy. "Well, muscle-head? Want to test your luck?"
The bulky boy took a single, trembling step forward. He stared up at the mountain of descending iron, clenched his massive fists until the skin bruised, and choked. He froze, his courage shattering completely. Dropping his head, he took a step back into the shadows, defeated by his own fear.
Izuku exhaled a long, bored sigh. "Just as I expected. You're all absolutely pathetic."
Izuku turned back toward the titan, a cold grin touching his lips. "Wasuke, let's carve this oversized scrap heap to piec
Izuku dipped his hips, channelling cursed energy straight into the soles of his red shoes until the asphalt beneath him caved inward. With a deafening shockwave that flattened the surrounding dust, he launched himself into the sky.
The ascent was instantaneous. He shot past the Zero-Pointer's knee joints, soared past its chest, and crested directly level with the machine's towering mechanical skull. The sheer scale of the construct was imposing to normal eyes, but to Izuku, it was nothing. It wasn't reinforced with supernatural wards or hardened by cursed energy—it was merely like any other standard machine, only scaled up.
"Cleave."
Izuku reached forward with both upper hands, his fingers brushing against the titan's central faceplate. He expended a mere thirty percent of his remaining reserves, allowing the technique to adjust dynamically to the mass and density of the metal.
The invisible slashes cut through the colossus not as a blunt strike, but as a microscopic dissection. With a high-pitched hum that tore through the air, hundreds of intersecting cuts flashed through the machine's body.
Hydraulic lines severed simultaneously. The primary engine block, the immense shoulder pistons, and the reinforced head were diced into cubic inches of pure scrap.
Izuku twisted in mid-air, kicking off one of the machine's six falling eyes, and plummeted back toward the street.
Behind him, the titan didn't even detonate—it simply disintegrated. Thousands of neatly sheared blocks of steel, sheared cabling, and shattered optical glass flowed down behind him like a metallic waterfall, crashing into the street in a dull, thunderous rain of harmless iron shavings.
Izuku touched down in the center of the avenue with a light, effortless tap of his shoes. He casually dusted off his shoulder, not a speck of ash clinging to the dark tattoos etched across his skin.
Through the deafening silence, the district loudspeakers sputtered to life, followed by a thoroughly unhinged scream from Present Mic:
"ALL VILLAINS IN BATTLE CENTER G HAVE BEEN DESTROYED, THANK YOU, LISTENERS, FOR TUNING IN. EVERY OTHER CENTER HAS LESS THAN TWO MINUTES ON THE CLOCK!"
"As I told you," Izuku muttered coldly as he walked past the sugar-doped examinee, not bothering to look at him. "If you want charity, go find a church or beg to any god you can. Perhaps if you had been placed into a different battle center, you might have scraped together enough points to play hero. But you crossed paths with someone stronger, and your fate was decided for you."
He reached the heavy reinforced entrance gates, casually walking past the parked transport buses.
"So wait like obedient cattle for the bus to take you home," Izuku tossed over his bare shoulder, stepping out onto the open path toward the central campus. "As for me, I carve out my own path and choose my own destiny."
The bus driver leaned out of his cabin, shouting frantically for him to get one, but Izuku didn't listen. He pushed cursed energy through his legs and broke into a steady sprint across the pavement, leaving the ruin of Sector G behind.
Only the strong dictate how they live. The weak simply endure whatever they are given.