Chapter 43: Final Exams Pt 1
Shota was not happy with the plan for the final exams, but Nezu had made it clear that it was non-negotiable. Apparently the HPSC allowing the first years to take the provisional licensing exam was, for some ungodly reason, dependent on them passing this absurd final. He'd voiced his opposition any number of times, but to no avail. Even with the extra training from All Might, Gran Torino, the Big 3, and all of the guest lecturers that All Might had managed to scrounge up, it still felt like they were asking far too much of their students.
Now, however, was not the time to let his own biases against the HPSC cloud his judgment. The nine professional heroes that had been chosen by the commission were sitting in a conference room, waiting for him and Snipe to go over the details of the exam. All Might, despite having worked with both 1-A and 1-B, decided that it would be for the best if he wasn't present. While all three of the teachers had worked with the outside pros in a professional setting, it was far more common for All Might to do so than either Shota or Snipe, and they wanted to avoid any unintentional biases.
Beyond that, Endeavor's well known rivalry with All Might made any interaction between the two volatile at the best of times. Given that Endeavor was about to achieve his dream of becoming the number one hero without explicitly surpassing All Might, none of the three teachers wanted to see exactly how he responded to All Might's true form in person.
"Ya'll mind taking the lead on this one?" Snipe asked as they approached the conference room. "Been a while since I ran a first year exam. Workin' with third years changes your perspective on things." Shota simply nodded, having already assumed that he would be doing most of the explanations.
"That should be fine. Are you comfortable telling the heroes the thoughts behind the matchups for 1-B?"
"No problem, pardner." Good. While Shota had been involved in the decision making for which students would face which heroes, he was far less familiar with the students in 1-B and would probably miss some of the important details in explaining the matchups.
As the two walked into the room, most of the conversation cut out. Endeavor and Yoroi Musha had not been speaking to anyone, while Best Jeanist, Wash, and Shishido quickly finished their conversation. Crust and Gang Orca were on the opposite side of the room, Gang Orca glaring at Shishido the entire time, and also quickly finished up. Hawks, though, looked Shota in the eye as he continued to regale Snatch with a story of his most recent take down. It wasn't until Best Jeanist forcibly silenced the avian hero with his own collar that the room came to complete silence.
"Thank you all for taking the time out of your patrol schedules to help us today." Shota figured it made sense to at least pay lip service to the idea that this was U.A's idea.
"Pfft." Wash interjected, his true voice coming through. "Like fucking any of us had any fucking choice."
Shota decided to just ignore that and power through. "Snipe and I will be explaining the details of these exams along with the reasoning behind each of the teams. Are there any questions before we get started?" Hawks made some offended sounding squawks, but Best Jeanist's hold on the collar around his mouth kept it to a bare minimum. Shota ignored him, as did everyone else.
"Good. As a reminder, you will be portraying a villain that teams for four students will be tasked with dealing with. The passing conditions for the students are to capture you with their provided handcuffs, for one to escape the testing grounds, or for them to protect a target for thirty minutes."
"What constitutes an escape?" Best Jeanist asked. "If the training grounds are similar to my time here, there are many exits available. With only one of each of us at a time, it would seem that we lack coverage, like ratty denim."
"There will be a single gate designated as the escape gate." Shota replied. "At the beginning of the exam, you will enter through that gate with the students on the opposite side of the grounds. Do whatever you want to keep them from passing through it. Whatever you want."
That got their attention, a few of them looking contemplative. "As for the target, it is meant to represent an essential server bank or some other important electronics. If you destroy it you will automatically win and the students will automatically fail. You will all be provided with a tracker that provides a rough estimate of its location. It will not tell you exactly where the device is located, but it will narrow it down to roughly the area of a city block. The students do not know that you have these."
"That doesn't seem entirely sporting." Crust interjected. "In fact, this exam as a whole seems rather weighted against the students. I certainly wouldn't expect even four of them to be able to defeat any of us in combat. On top of that, we know where their target is and we can take any precautions we want to prevent their escape."
"As the graduates in the room will know, we believe in going Plus Ultra." Endeavor nodded silently, but Best Jeanist and Crust did not appear convinced. "As a handicap, however, our support engineers have provided a set of weighted mild quirk suppressants. They will both weigh you down and restrict your quirk to roughly three-quarters power. Any questions?"
"Any goddamn side effects to the fucking suppressants? Chemical shit has fucked me up in the past." Wash asked.
"These are a new variety of suppressants that our support students are working on based on bioelectric feedback. Reducing your quirk output to roughly three-quarters is the most they can accomplish so far, which is ideal for training situations like these." At that mention, Hawks raised an eyebrow, finally seeming to stop resisting Best Jeanist's restraint, and his collar relaxed back to its normal state.
"To reassure you, this is not the first field testing of these suppressants and they have proven robust. There should be no side effects. Does anyone have a problem with that?" Shota was well aware that each of the heroes in the room had used cutting edge support gear before, and as he expected, none had a problem with the suppressants. If anything, Crust and Gang Orca looked somewhat relieved that they wouldn't be going all out on the students.
"Are there any questions at all about the scenario before we go into the team compositions?" Again, Shota was met with silence. He'd rarely been unhappy to work with Best Jeanist in the field, and having him here to keep Hawks quiet was really making this so much easier. Snipe began handing out the packets of information on the students to each of the heroes.
"I will cover the five teams from Class 1-A while Snipe will cover the five teams from Class 1-B. Endeavor, Wash, Gang Orca, Yoroi Musha, you will be testing 1-A students. Best Jeanist, Crust, Shishido, Snatch, you will be testing 1-B students. Hawks, I don't know who you pissed off, but you'll be doing double duty testing both a team of 1-A students and a team of 1-B students."
"Oh." Shota paused for a moment at that, unsure if Hawks was simply reacting to the fact that he was involved in two exams, or if he was referring to the HPSC education director. The man's face had gone completely unreadable, which concerned Shota.
When Hawks didn't offer anything else up, Shota continued with his explanations and justifications for the teams of 1-A students. "1-A will be holding their exams this morning, while 1-B will be holding their exams this afternoon. I will discuss the 1-A teams in the order that they will be held."
"First, Wash, you will be facing Sen Kaibara, Togaru Kamakiri, Eijiro Kirishima, and Itsuka Kendo. The test ground will be Training Ground Sigma. This is a replica of a river canyon and will encourage them to remain on the ground following the river. Between their quirks and training, all four of them are heavily focused on purely physical melee combat. This exam is meant to test their creativity and abilities when facing an opponent who can completely avoid physical combat."
"Fuckin' a." Wash responded, already flipping through his notes. Shota didn't know how to take that, and so decided to just move on.
"Second, Gang Orca, you will be facing Koji Koda, Mezo Shoji, Kyoka Jiro, and Setsuna Tokage. The test ground will be Training Ground Iota. This replicates a small set of docks on a fake freshwater ocean. While there are some fish in the water, none are particularly large. All of your opponents have quirks that focus on sound or senses in one way or another. You can cancel that out entirely with your hypersonic blasts. Their task will be to confront you under favorable conditions for you."
"Hm. I'm very familiar with Jiro, and briefly looked into Koda and Shoji. This will be interesting." The cetacean hero was always hard to read, but appeared to be looking forward to the exam.
"Third, Yoroi Musha, you will be facing Yosetsu Awase, Ochako Uraraka, Yui Kodia, and Momo Yaoyorozu. The test ground will be Training Ground Gamma. This is an industrial-based training ground. All four of your opponents lack traditionally combat-focused quirks. Their exam is meant to test their adaptation to a highly skilled combatant for an opponent."
Yoroi Musha's eyes hardened behind his mask at the mention of Uraraka. "Are there any limits for injuries that we should be aware of? If I am meant to test their combat skills, I can't be holding back." That was a worrisome question. Shota would have to keep his eyes on Yoroi Musha.
"We have Recovery Girl on site, but try not to go too overboard." Yoroi Musha nodded, looking mildly upset at the response.
"Fourth, Hawks, you will be facing Mina Ashido, Ibara Shiozaki, Pony Tsunotori, and Hiryu Rin. The test ground will be Training Ground Omega. This is our largest training ground, located in the wooded hills to the west of campus. All four of these students rely on keeping their distance from their opponents. I have faith that you will be able to get close to them and force them into melee.
"Oh yeah, that'll be fun." Hawks had already flipped through the notes handed to him, tossing the folder back on the table. "I remember all four from the festival. Looking forward to it, boss man." He gave Shota a lazy salute.
Still ignoring him, Shota moved on to his final team. "Last, Endeavor, you will be facing Fumikage Tokoyami, Shoto Todoroki, Juzo Honenuki, and Izuku Midoriya. The test ground will be Training Ground Beta. As you know, this is a standard cityscape testing ground. All four students have quirks that are among the most powerful in the course, for either combat, crowd control, or both. The goal of this exam is to test their response to an opponent that is unquestionably stronger than them. Will you have any issues with testing your own son?"
"No. I will ensure that he only passes if he deserves to pass. I will not hold back on behalf of my family." The man's glare was intense behind his mask of flames. While it was the answer that Shota had wanted, it was a worrisome way to put it. He'd have to keep an eye on Endeavor's match. Of all the finals that were about to happen, Shota would put money on that one causing issues for him in the end.
---
Despite all of the training that All Might, Gran Torino, the Big 3, and all of the other guest lecturers had put them through, somehow, they had never spent any time in Training Ground Sigma. Even so, Sen felt almost entirely at home in the grounds as he and his team worked their way towards the target they had to protect.
It reminded him of his time training for U.A in Nabo natural park alongside Yo. The sheer, rocky cliffs of the fake gorge, lined with a quickly thickening forest along the rim, made his knuckles ache as he remembered his time sourcing materials for a footbridge. This canyon was far deeper than the one he and Yo had spent so much time in in Nabo, though, the walls far too clean and consistent to have been created through erosion.
The river was also smaller than the one he had worked in. In fact, it was small enough that the four of them could walk single file on either side of the river without even getting their feet wet. Knowing how U.A liked to do things, Sen assumed that there was some control valve for how much water flowed through the training ground, so students could experience raging rivers and trickling streams.
Eventually, the four of them came to where the target had been stashed. It was, in a startlingly cliched move, hidden in a small cave behind a waterfall. Sen didn't know how often caves formed behind waterfalls, but assumed that it wasn't particularly often.
The target that they had to protect was, incongruously, what appeared to be some sort of computer or server system. There was nowhere to plug in such a thing within the training grounds, so it wasn't in immediate danger of being damaged in the water, but Sen still wondered at the logic behind that decision.
"Ok, we need some sort of plan." Sen's attention was drawn from the odd choice of target back to his teammates as Kendo spoke up.
"Why bother?" Kamakiri spoke up, and Sen had to restrain himself from laughing. "Wash is a rescue hero. We all have combat-focused quirks. Seems pretty fucking straightforward to me."
"I know you're not an idiot." Sen began, even if Kamakiri's enjoyment of combat did often cause Sen to question his sanity. "But Wash isn't the number seven fucking hero for no reason. He's had to fight before. The results are never pretty for the villains."
"Bah, all he does is make shitty little bubbles. How the hell is that suited for combat?" Kamakiri replied.
Before anyone could respond, an air horn sounded and the speakers around the training ground came to life with Principal Nezu's voice. "Wash has entered the grounds and the exam has begun. Good luck!"
"I think we're going to get a chance to find out, bro." Kirishima belatedly answered Kamakiri's question. "Anyone else get a chill just now?" Sen didn't want to admit it, but he'd felt a wave of uncertainty as soon as he heard Nezu's announcement. Something about the principal's tone of voice made it seem like they'd need all the luck they could manage.
"Ok, how about this." Kendo spoke up, taking her class vice-rep tone of voice. Even Kamakiri paid attention when she spoke like this. "We don't have time to move the target so some of us will have to stay here to defend it. It's a straight shot from the exit gate down the river to the target, so we know where Wash will be coming from."
"Makes it hard for us to escape, though." Sen noted. None of them were particularly adept at stealth.
"So we fight! That's what I've been fucking saying!" Kamakiri exclaimed.
"Not necessarily. Kirishima, Kaibara, how do you two feel about a bit of rock climbing?" Kendo had a smile play across her lips as she asked, and Sen couldn't help but agree. When someone thought they had you constrained to a single path, it was always to your benefit to find some way around the situation.
"No problem here." Sen responded, already tracing a line up the cliff that he could climb. He could make his own handholds with his fingertip drill bits, so it was more a matter of finding the least steep route. He wouldn't have great footholds, but he was strong enough to climb the entire thing hand over hand if necessary. Kirishima made similar noises of assent.
"Great, then you two can rush the exit gate while Kamakiri and I hold off Wash. If you two are quick enough, we shouldn't have to fight for very long. Try to stay quiet and away from the lip of the canyon so Wash doesn't notice you." Sen wasn't sure how long Kendo and Kamakiri could realistically hope to last against Wash, but figured the four of them combined wouldn't make that much of a difference.
"I dunno." Kirishima began. "It doesn't feel very manly to run away like that." Sen repressed a sigh.
"Remember Kirishima, you're not running away. You're getting back up. What could be manlier than that?" Kendo argued back. "Either way we probably don't have that long before Wash shows up. You two have got to get out of sight before he does, otherwise none of this planning will matter.
Thankfully, Kendo's arguments appeared to be enough to sway Kirishima and the two of them quickly got to scaling the rocky cliff side. While Sen had to climb hand over hand and drill finger holds for himself at every step, Kirishima simply drove his hardened hands and feet directly into the cliff. Apparently once Kirishima had been convinced of a plan's manliness, he threw himself into it one hundred percent.
Once they reached the rim, Sen decided that the concealment was far less complete than they had thought from the ground. They could step more into the trees in order to remain unseen, but then they would travel slower, have a harder time following the river, and likely make more noise as well.
Well, Sen would likely make more noise. As soon as Kirishima began moving through the forest, Sen realized that the normally unsubtle boy was nearly silent moving through the woods. In fact, it looked like moving through underbrush and vegetation was nearly second nature for him.
Kirishima noticed the look Sen was giving him and smiled broadly. "My grandfather was a park ranger, and took me hiking a lot." He said softly. "You never really forget how. Just follow me." It took Sen a minute or two to match Kirishima's stride length and care, but he found that if he stepped where the hardening boy did, creeping through the forest wasn't anywhere near as loud nor as difficult as he had imagined it to be.
Roughly three minutes after they had begun their trek towards the exit gate, Kirishima motioned for a halt. Looking towards the canyon that they were paralleling, Sen immediately saw why.
A mass of iridescent, yellow-tinted bubbles was moving in the direction of Kendo and Kamakiri, floating at a fast walking pace. There was no hitch or alteration to the speed of the bubbles as they passed Sen and Kirishima's location, so hopefully they hadn't been spotted.
Sen let out a breath that he'd been holding. "Think we gave him the slip?"
"Looks like it, bro." Kirishima replied. "Let's pick up the pace, just in case." All of a sudden Kirishima was moving again, almost twice as fast as he had been before. While Sen could easily keep up with him, silence was, at this point, out of the equation. Somehow, Kirishima was still as quiet as a breeze through the trees.
"Kendo." Sen spoke into one of the communication devices that Yaoyorozu had made for the entire class. He hadn't expected to split up, but now he was glad for the girl's forethought. "We just saw Wash headed in your direction. Maybe two minutes out."
"Thanks. You guys close to the exit?" Kendo replied.
"Hope so. Good luck with Wash." After a hum of acknowledgment from Kendo the line went quiet again.
Thankfully, the exit gate was not much further, especially at the pace that Kirishima set. After another minute or so of quick movement, Nezu's face was visible on the arch high above the entrance gate. As they got close enough to see the gate clearly through the trees, however, it quickly became apparent that Wash had been busy before setting off towards the target.
Bubbles of all sizes cluttered the entire gateway, shining in red, blue, yellow, green, and orange. They formed a barrier nearly three feet thick in all directions from the gate, and reaching nearly ten feet into the air, neatly blocking the entire passage.
"Wash is here!" Kendo's panicked voice suddenly broke over the communications device. "Are you anywh-" The signal cut out, a light static noise filtering through the earpiece.
"I… I'm sure they'll be fine." Kirishima tried to be upbeat. "And these are just bubbles, shouldn't be too hard for me to get out." He flexed his quirk, hardening his entire body. Before Sen could call out and tell him that they should be careful, Kirishima was already dashing towards the wall of bubbles.
As Kirishima had predicted, the bubbles popped upon first contact with his rocky body. He had not, however, predicted that the bubbles would be full of various substances.
One of those substances was, apparently, explosions. Dozens of the bubbles exploded into firecracker sized explosions, although all added together it created a deafening sound.
After the explosions had died down, acids sizzled on the ground while static electricity and a thick blue haze floated in the air. When the haze and smoke had dissipated enough for Sen to see what had happened, he could see Kirishima, still hardened but now thoroughly unconscious, standing maybe a foot into the wall of bubbles, with at least half of the original width of the barrier still between him and the exit.
It was lucky that he was still hardened, as acid hissed on his arms, eating away at the edges of his costume. Some sort of quick set adhesive had also sprayed all over Kirishima, attaching him quite firmly to the ground despite his unconsciousness.
This was a problem. There was no way Sen would be able to safely make it through that minefield. He fingered his new support weapon at his side, but decided against using it here for now. After all, Sen didn't know how strong the acid was, and if his gear broke, then he'd really be out of luck.
But by the same token, he didn't have very long. Wash was probably already in the process of defeating Kendo and Kamakiri. It was unclear how long they would last, but it probably wasn't much more than a few minutes.
Quickly spinning up his legs for the long, loping strides that moved him the fastest, Sen turned and headed back into the canyon. Hopefully his teammates would be able to hold out until he got there.
---
"Eijiro!" Ashido's shout went out as soon as the explosions at the gate went off. Whatever Izuku had expected to happen when Kirishima hit the wall of bubbles, it certainly wasn't a set of explosions. The sound of the explosions tickled at Izuku's mind, bringing back memories that had laid low for the past year. Izuku roughly pushed those memories to the rear of his mind, trying to focus instead on the monitors in front of him.
Unfortunately, the monitors that had been fed by the cameras near the exit gate now showed only static. Some of the more distant cameras focused on the exit showed a small amount of blue smoke rising from the gate, but none of them showed any damage that would explain the video outage.
"Oh dear." Nezu chirped as he began quickly tapping away at the miniaturized keyboard in front of him. "It appears that our first guest has decided to go all out. I wonder if the others will follow suit."
"Eijiro's ok, right?!" Ashido cried out.
"Don't worry, dearie." Recovery Girl responded, attention locked on a pair of screens directly in front of her that Izuku could not see. "We have other health monitors in the training grounds. Both Kirishima and Kaibara are still doing fine, although Kirishima may have been knocked unconscious."
"Shuzenji, if you could send some medbots in case…" Nezu began.
"Already on it." Recovery Girl replied, irritation coloring her voice. "I don't know why I expected the pros to be any smarter about injuries than you all. They all think with their fists, not their heads." She continued to complain as she watched the health monitors and ordered the med bots around, her voice eventually falling low enough that Izuku couldn't hear it.
Instead, he focused on Kendo and Kamakiri's fight with Wash himself, which had now begun in earnest. A cloud of yellow tinted bubbles hung over the entire canyon as the battle began, while Wash continued to pump blue, green, and orange bubbles out towards the pair of students.
Kendo and Kamakiri were doing their best to hold the wave of bubbles off. Kendo had enlarged her hands nearly as large as they could go, using them as fans to waft the bubbles away. As far as Izuku could tell, this was not her first strategy, given the number of burns, both acid and electrical, that he could see across her knuckles and fingers. At the same time, tiny blades were flying from Kamakiri's hands and arms as he popped any bubble that made it past Kendo's wind and got too close to them.
Even looking at it for just a moment, though, Izuku could tell that it wasn't going to be enough. Every bubble that popped dropped additional acid or adhesive onto the ground, or left a light blue haze of gas in the air, effectively denying the area to the students. Wash, however, seemed unaffected by all of the hazards and was slowly advancing towards the waterfall where the target was hidden, forcing Kendo and Kamakiri to retreat. Pretty soon, there simply wasn't going to be enough space for either of them to work without the bubbles being directly on top of them.
Even though they couldn't hear anything through the monitors, it was still obvious that Wash was thoroughly enjoying his stint as a villain, laughing while flooding the battlefield with bubbles.
"He's toying with them." Rin was the first to comment on the desperate fight for survival that Kendo and Kamakiri were going through. "If he has that much control over his bubbles and what they contain, he certainly could have captured them both by now."
"Not necessarily." Aizawa's voice was something of a surprise. Until then, Izuku was sure that he had fallen asleep while leaning against the back wall of the room. He hadn't moved other than to open his eyes, intently watching the monitors. After another moment, though, their teacher simply closed his eyes again, apparently falling back asleep.
"Uh…" Izuku's voice felt especially loud, filling the silence that followed. "Mr. Aizawa has a point. Wash is no slouch in hand-to-hand, but… Kendo is highly skilled and her quirk can make her both faster and stronger. Wash only needs to keep this up for another little bit and he should have both of them captured with no danger to himself."
"It certainly feels unfair, though." Shiozaki pointed out, her hands clasped together in prayer for her classmates.
"Something tells me that's the point." Yaoyorozu opined. As Izuku looked back to listen to her reasoning, he saw the barest glimpse of a smile flit across Aizawa's face. "All of our matchups seem designed to either force us to work without our greatest strength, face our greatest weakness, or both."
"Yeah, but they can do that without throwing shit like that at us." Tokage gestured with one disembodied hand towards the static-filled monitors from the gate, her other hand rubbing Ashido's back to comfort the girl.
"It does seem a bit excessive…" Yaoyorozu admitted.
"Well, in the real world, these are situations that could come up…" Izuku offered as potential reasoning.
"Yeah, Green, but then they should use our classes to teach us how to deal with them instead of throwing it at us as a final exam !" Izuku wanted to disagree with Kyoka, but he really couldn't. There was something off about the structure of these exams. Taking so many top heroes off of their patrol routes for a day was not something to be done lightly, and the exam really was stacked against the students quite badly.
"You should all pay attention." Aizawa's voice effortlessly cut through the conversation, reducing the students to silence. His eyes were once again open, focused on the monitors at the front of the room. "It's almost over."
Kendo and Kamakiri had been forced back to a small circle of ground just in front of the waterfall cave. They were standing side to side, faces identical images of grim determination against the near endless onslaught of iridescent, dangerous bubbles in front of them. Each of them bore additional acid and electrical burns across their faces and bodies, while Kendo had a chunk of adhesive attached to her left shoulder. Kamakiri appeared to be favoring the left side of his body, his left arm hanging limply at his side.
Some of the bubbles floating around them now included red-tinted bubbles. Kamakiri had, at first, aimed directly for those bubbles, hoping that the explosions would pop nearby bubbles as well. It was not to be, as the explosions just pushed nearby bubbles to move faster, making it harder for him to aim and Kendo to control them.
"What's that?" Shoji pointed at a monitor off to the side that Izuku hadn't been paying attention to. With his multiple eyes, Shoji appeared to be watching all of the many monitors at once.
The monitor that he pointed to showed the river downstream from the waterfall, and Kaibara racing up the river with his long, loping gait. He was using his quirk to twirl something that was difficult to make out through the video.
"It's his new support item." Awase provided. The two of them had worked closely with the crazy support student, Hatsume, and it had apparently paid off in time for finals. All of a sudden, Kaibara threw his hand forward. A weight on a chain flew from his grasp directly at Wash's unguarded back.
On a separate monitor, Izuku could see Wash hear something approaching and turn to see what it was. He wasn't fast enough, though, as the weight at the end of Kaibara's chain took him in the side of the head, knocking him to his knees.
Immediately Kaibara threw his arm into reverse, reeling the weighted chain in and preparing for another throw. The flow of bubbles had ceased on impact, and Kendo and Kamakiri took immediate advantage of the lessened pressure, carving a path towards the downed hero.
Another throw of the chain wrapped around one of Wash's arms, pulling the hero backwards onto the ground, and the battle was essentially over. The downed hero again began producing bubbles from the torso of his costume, but they now flew mostly into the air, away from the students and easier to avoid. His costume's flat-backed design also cost him precious seconds in regaining his feet. The moment he managed to get off of his back, Kendo tackled him back to the ground, a handcuff wrapping around an exposed wrist.
"Wash has been restrained! The hero team wins!" Nezu announced into a microphone, and the three students visible on screen drooped in relief.
"Hmph." Aizawa snorted. "Wash should know better than to get tunnel vision like that."
"I believe he was focused on maintaining his quirk through the suppressants, Aizawa." Nezu replied, finally bringing the cameras at the exit gate back up. Kirishima was clearly visible glued to the ground in the middle of the wall of bubbles, slightly singed, but otherwise alright. Ashido heaved a sigh of relief. "I dare say our support students will have a wealth of data to play with after these finals."
"That was… kinda scary." Koda whispered, knowing that his team was next.
"Don't worry big guy." Setsuna said, her head floating over to the timid boy. "Just use your quirk to tell Gang Orca to let us go and we'll be fine."
"I don't think my quirk works like that…" Koda replied, head down.
"Can't hurt to try, right?" The rest of Setsuna's body had rejoined her head at this point. Shoji had also joined the two, offering more useful advice to Koda instead.
"Guess it's my turn, Green." Kyoka said from Izuku's side. He turned to look at her and she captured his lips in a kiss. "For luck." There was a bit of a tremble in Kyoka's voice, and she looked like she was facing her own death. She had trained with Gang Orca, so she knew better than him what the hero was capable of.
"You don't need luck, you've got this in the bag." Izuku responded. "But just in case." He leaned in for a deeper kiss, his cheeks darkening as Setsuna let out a wolf whistle at the sight. "I think that should do you for luck."
"Thanks, Green." Kyoka moved to join her teammates, her cheeks as red as Izuku's, before turning back to Izuku. "At least I don't have to face Endeavor. He might actually kill you." Todoroki barked a laugh at that, but no one else seemed to know how to react. Kyoka turned back to her team, and an Ectoplasm clone led the quartet from the room towards their testing zone, leaving the room in silence once again.
---
The ride to the testing ground was tense. Mezo could pick up on the stress that all of his teammates were under. Koda was obviously worried, twiddling his fingers and attempting to shrink into the seat of the bus. Jiro affected bored disdain, listening to some music to get herself pumped up, but Mezo could hear her muttering just under her breath about the upcoming test. She must have picked up the habit from Midoriya.
Finally, Tokage was outwardly the most relaxed of all of them, unsuccessfully attempting to engage Ectoplasm's clone in conversation. Her heart rate, though, was elevated and highly variable. Whenever it spiked was when she tried to speak with the hero once again, apparently as a method of stress relief.
The bus deposited them near a rear entrance to Training Ground Iota. They had only had one class in this particular training ground so far, and none of them were particularly familiar with it.
"The target is currently located at the central dock." Ectoplasm informed them. "You should head there now and prepare your defense. Good luck." With that, the hero boarded the bus once again and drove off.
"We should plan while we walk to the target." Mezo offered, both as an obvious thing to do, but also to take the others' minds off of their stress. "Wash didn't wait very long after the last group reached the target before starting."
"Alright." Tokage said, leading the pack into the training ground. "We're stacked on recon, so we'll know when and where Gang Orca's coming from, but we're a little light on combat power."
"Even if we were stacked on fighters, I wouldn't want to go up against Gang Orca." Jiro added. "I've seen him fight. He's intense."
"No doubt." Tokage replied. "So here's the deal. We have the information upper hand. We just need to make sure we all know where Gang Orca is at all times and distract him away from the target the best we can. If there's a chance, I can also try to slip out through the exit gate to end this sooner."
"You saw what the target looked like for the last group, though." Jiro said. "How do we hide that from him?"
"With that." Tokage pointed at a full-size crane sitting on the docks. Knowing U.A, it was likely fully operational. "That should let us move the target around, or at least keep it high away out of his reach."
"As good of an idea as any." Mezo said after a moment of thought. The group continued on their way to the central dock in silence, each mentally preparing for the fight ahead of them.
When they arrived there, they found the target as promised. It was located inside of a full-size shipping container, one of the many strewn about the docks. If anything, that just made it easier for them to execute their plan.
"So…" Mezo looked at the crane that Tokage had suggested they use. "Does anyone here know how to work a crane?" Everyone shook their heads no at that. "Well, then I suppose I can give it a shot."
"Aw, I wanted to play with the crane." Tokage pouted somewhat.
"That's why you shouldn't get to use it." Mezo deadpanned, already moving towards the crane.
"Remember, you need to fly an eye and ear out to where Gang Orca's coming from." Jiro reminded her. "And I don't feel comfortable with you running a crane one-eyed."
"Fine." Tokage pouted some, but split off part of her head to fly out towards the entrance Gang Orca would be coming through. While Mezo climbed into the driver's seat of the cargo crane, Koda began speaking with some of the smaller animals that lived in the training ground.
Once Mezo squeezed into the control cabin, he was pleased to see that U.A was thorough enough to make sure the keys were in the ignition. It would have raised uncomfortable questions if he had been forced to hotwire the crane. Additionally, given the number of joysticks, buttons, and other controls, he figured it was better that he was here than Tokage. After all, Mezo had enough arms to try everything at once.
After a few moments spent figuring out exactly what each lever and button did, Mezo maneuvered the crane to pick up the shipping container that held the target. As the crane crane clamped onto the container, he heard Principal Nezu's voice over the speaker system. "Gang Orca has entered the arena and the exam has begun. Good luck!"
The crane easily hefted the shipping container into the sky, dozens of feet into the air. Mezo considered breaking the controls of the crane so Gang Orca couldn't easily get the target down, but didn't want to risk accidentally letting the shipping container drop. It wouldn't do to lose the exam before even running into their opponent. He decided to take the key with him, though. Gang Orca could, in principle, climb the crane to get to the target, but it wouldn't be easy.
As Mezo exited the controls of the crane, he could hear the screeching of metal from across the training grounds. "He's barricading the exit." Tokage reported over the comms. "It looks like those things don't weigh anything to him. Are we sure his quirk is suppressed?"
"None of the animals here want to get anywhere near him." Koda whispered into his comms. "They can tell he's a predator."
"Hell, I don't want to be anywhere near him." Tokage replied. The sound of metal crashing onto metal rang out across the grounds and both Mezo and Jiro flinched. "Holy crap, he just hurled a shipping container on top of another one! How strong is this guy?!"
"Stronger than me, it sounds like." Mezo replied.
"We're looking to stall him, not beat him in a fight." Jiro reminded them. "For the record, I think he's even stronger than you just saw."
"Great." Tokage groaned. "Heads up, guys, he's heading your way."
"Anyone have any more bright ideas?" Jiro asked.
"Koda, would any animals be willing to help as long as they're not near Gang Orca?" Tokage spoke rapidly.
"I think so." Came Koda's timid reply.
"Great, can you send anything you got over to the exit with me? Gang Orca grabbed these things with his hands, and it weakened the sides. If I can make some small holes in these containers, I could probably slip through piece by piece."
"I'll see what they can do. It's mostly rats." Koda sent back.
"I guess I can deal with that." Tokage didn't sound thrilled at the choice of animal, but wisely did not complain.
Just a moment later, Mezo heard the heavy footsteps of Gang Orca quickly pounding towards them. "That was sooner than I expected." He said quietly.
"He has sonar." Jiro pointed out. "We were never going to be able to hide from him." A depressing thought. Hopefully they'd be able to hold out long enough for Tokage to escape. And even more hopefully it wouldn't be too painful.
---
Gang Orca's entrance to the dockyard was appropriately dramatic for the tension that Kyoka was experiencing. She had a good idea of what to expect from seeing him work during her internship, and that didn't make her feel good about their chances. Beyond that, the heavy beat of his footsteps as he approached just pushed her anxiety higher.
The orca hero made his presence known by barrelling through a pile of empty crates, sending them scattering all across the dockyard. After such an unsubtle entrance, he took his time approaching the three students, his long coat flapping in the wind. There was a snarl on his face and his eyes were narrowed. For a moment, he looked every inch the villain that he was supposed to be.
"Three little heroes." Gang Orca growled. "Bring me what I want, and no one has to get hurt. I don't want to hurt you, after all." Kyoka fully believed that Gang Orca didn't want to hurt them, but she also knew for a fact that failing this exam would hurt far worse than anything Gang Orca could do to them today. That was one important way this was different from a real villain fight, she supposed.
While Gang Orca's intimidation had worked on Koda, the timid boy taking a step away from the hero, it did not work on Shoji. Instead, her friend threw himself at Gang Orca, aiming a multi-armed punch at the hero's snout.
It didn't connect. Gang Orca caught the attack in his massive left hand, bringing his right hand up to swing back at Shoji's torso. It was an awkward position, but Shoji was able to block the attack, grunting slightly as he angled Gang Orca's fist away from him. Shoji's return attack was similarly caught by Gang Orca, and the two fought for the upper hand.
Kyoka saw an opportunity and sprang forward to attempt to stick her earjacks into Gang Orca's side and blast him with her heartbeat. She was barely two steps away from the hero before he let loose with a hypersonic blast directly at Shoji. While it may have been aimed at her teammate, Kyoka was close enough to the that she was well within its area of effect.
Her vision went white as the intense noise washed over her, and she crashed to her feet. The rough wooden surface of the docks gave her something to focus on, to ignore the ringing in her ears, as she slowly regained her vision. There was a muffled crash as Gang Orca tossed the stunned Shoji to one side. As Kyoka looked at where he had landed, she knew that she should have heard it much more clearly. Her hearing was obviously still affected by the hypersonic blast that she had taken.
A shadow fell across Kyoka, and she realized that Gang Orca was standing over her, staring down at her. Kyoka thought to scramble away, but recognized the look in her former supervisor's eyes. It was the look of a predator. If she moved, he would strike.
"Where is the target, Heartsong?" Gang Orca's voice was also far quieter than it should have been, barely able to be heard over the ringing in Kyoka's ears. "No one else needs to get hurt." Before Kyoka could respond, Koda suddenly appeared, throwing a punch at Gang Orca's undefended side.
It connected solidly, but did not appear to inconvenience Gang Orca at all. "Leave Jiro alone!" That was perhaps the first time Kyoka had ever heard Koda raise his voice above a whisper. Surprisingly, Gang Orca turned his attention from her towards the rocky boy, who immediately began to cower backwards, his temporary courage fleeing him. Kyoka took the moment to scramble back to her feet and regain some distance from Gang Orca.
"Did you just try to use your quirk on me, Anima?" Gang Orca rumbled menacingly. The hero took a step towards Koda, who instinctively took a step backwards. "It worked. I'm leaving her alone, which means all of my attention is on you." He stepped forwards again, forcing Koda back even further, his back now against a shipping container.
"D-don't touch me." Kyoka could hear Koda just whisper out. The ringing in her ears was dissipating, thankfully.
"If you insist." Gang Orca's mouth turned into a smile as he inhaled, preparing another hypersonic blast. Each attack was at a slightly different frequency, but hearing it earlier against Shoji helped Kyoka realize that it wasn't a sudden thing; there was a buildup before it became truly devastating.
She had heard it before Gang Orca had hit Shoji with his quirk. She heard it again now.
There was no planning what she did next. All she knew was Izuku's half-remembered words of canceling out sounds from the night before and that her teammate was in danger. One earjack listened intently for the tell tale sounds of his hypersonic blast charging up, the other snaked down to her boot amplifier, as her wrist amplifiers didn't work at high enough frequencies for this.
As Gang Orca began powering up his blast, Kyoka began pumping out the exact same frequency through her speakers. At first, it didn't feel like anything at all was happening, maybe even making things louder. In desperation, Kyoka tried everything she knew of to shift her phase and save Koda and for a moment, it felt like nothing was working.
Then, in a stroke of absolute genius or absolute idiocy, Kyoka simply let go. She let her body do whatever it wanted, the way she did when she got lost in a song. The way she had against Kirishima in the sports festival.
Something shifted. Something felt different. In the heat of the moment, Kyoka couldn't give a more specific description than that. But something fell into place, and the building hypersonic blast disappeared completely.
Gang Orca's eyes widened slightly in surprise, before he swung his head to look directly at Kyoka, staring into her soul. "Impressive, Heartsong. Now, however, is when I let you know that Anima's quirk does not last for very long on me." Before Koda could get another word out, Gang Orca backhanded him hard enough to send him sprawling on the ground.
The cetacean hero's face broke into a truly unsettling grin. "You may want to run now." Kyoka really did, but knew that she couldn't. Koda and Shoji were both down, and Setsuna was doing her best to escape and win the match for them. If nothing else, Kyoka had to buy a bit more time, and so she settled into a defensive stance. She thought she was ready for whatever Gang Orca could throw at her.
She was wrong.
Faster than she ever expected, Gang Orca rushed at her, driving his fist into her stomach. He didn't strike with anywhere near his full strength, but it was still enough to lift her off her feet and force the air from her lungs.
Pain shot through Kyoka's entire body as she fell to the ground, gasping for breath. What had she been thinking?! Gang Orca was one of the strongest heroes in the country. How could she have thought to stand up to him in hand to hand combat?
Instinctively, she curled around herself, expecting another blow to fall any minute now. Setsuna was saying something through the comms, but Kyoka was too focused on protecting herself and catching her breath to hear what it was.
A few moments later, the lack of a follow up and the sounds of a scuffle by the crane attracted her attention, and she peered towards the noises. Gang Orca had stalked off towards the controls for the crane. Presumably he had figured out where the target was and planned to drop it and take victory for himself.
Thankfully, Shoji had recovered from his earlier stunning and was again wrestling with Gang Orca.. Now he had no fewer than ten arms, eight of which were locked against Gang Orca's massive hands. The remaining two arms were folded up and over Shoji's head, forming a helmet of muscle and bone, covering the boy's only two ears that he could not get rid of any other way.
From where she lay, still panting and gasping for air, Kyoka could hear the hypersonic blasts that Gang Orca was aiming at Shoji. Thankfully, she was far enough away that they were not debilitating. Similarly, Shoji's improvisation with his arms to cover his head seemed to make him resistant, if not immune, to their effect.
Even as Kyoka watched, Shoji sprouted two more arms from his back and added them to the contest of strength against Gang Orca. The hero's face was contorted in exertion, as was Shoji's, but a moment after he had added two more arms, Gang Orca was forced back a step. Then another.
Pressing the advantage, yet another two arms emerged from Shoji, bringing the total to fourteen. Gang Orca did not appear worried by this though, as his eyes narrowed at the action by the large boy.
Instead, Gang Orca dropped down, suddenly giving way to Shoji's pressure. At the unexpected loss of resistance, Shoji could only stumble forward a step before Gang Orca stepped forward and lifted. All of a sudden, the multi-armed boy was held in the air above the hero's head, shocked and surprised at this turn of events.
There was a moment where Kyoka was sure that Shoji would stabilize, that he would escape from Gang Orca's grasp. After all, the balance required for this could be easily disturbed from the top. He never got a chance, though, as Gang Orca spun and hurled Shoji at a nearby shipping container, embedding the student into its metal wall.
His final obstacle out of the way, Gang Orca once again turned and continued his march towards the crane. Kyoka tried to force herself to her feet, to stand up and continue to delay him as long as possible. The earlier blow he had dealt her was more serious than she had thought, though, as she could only make it up to her knees before wheezing and coughing.
Part of Kyoka cried out that he was unstoppable, that the teachers had put them into a completely unwinnable situation. She squeezed her eyes shut and slammed her fist down on the wooden docks in frustration, feeling the solidity of the support beam beneath her. To have come this far only to fail now seemed unbearable.
A sudden realization hit her then. Kyoka looked across the docks and found Gang Orca striding across the same wooden docks as she was standing on. As quickly as she could, Kyoka used her earjacks to plug into the docks themselves and started hunting for resonances.
A short moment later, she sent out a blast of sound. There hadn't been enough time to choose her frequencies perfectly, and the entire dockyard began to vibrate. In particular, though, the patch of docks that Gang Orca was standing on vibrated even more than the rest. Kyoka fed even more power through her earjacks and the docks under Gang Orca suddenly gave way. As he fell, she could hear his unamused response, "Really?"
That was all he said before falling into the water below. For a moment, it was nearly silent on the docks, just the sound of water lapping below them. Shoji stumbled away from the shipping container he had been thrown into, barely keeping his balance, while Koda looked all around with wide, panicked eyes.
In a flash, one of Gang Orca's massive hands burst through the dock beneath Shoji, grabbing him by the waist and, in one swift motion, pulling him under the water. Kyoka and Koda could only stare at where their teammate had been before pulling themselves together and sprinting as quickly as they could towards the crane. It was heavy enough to be on a concrete outcropping, not the wooden piers that made up the rest of the docks.
They weren't fast enough.
Just a few seconds later, Gang Orca once again reached through the dock, this time wrapping one of his monstrous hands around Koda's thigh, submerging the gentle boy in an instant. Kyoka's fear pushed her even faster, and she dashed the last few steps to the concrete pier, diving onto the rough surface to save herself from the terror beneath.
Her landing was uncontrolled and inelegant, ending up with her rolling and skidding all the way to the base of the crane. Once she came to a stop, though, she couldn't help but laugh, both in relief, and at her stupidity for dumping a professional hero with a goddamn whale quirk into the water.
That laughter was short lived, as Gang Orca shot from the water as if launched from a cannon, landing in front of Kyoka, dripping with water. His eyes were bloodshot and a low growl was emanating from his chest. "Are you done wasting time yet?"
He watched as Kyoka stumbled once again to her feet, putting her fists and earjacks up in what she knew was a fight she couldn't win. She just had to make it last long enough for Setsuna to get out. "I'm just getting warmed up. Come on, big guy, I can do this all day."
Gang Orca narrowed his eyes at Kyoka, sizing her up. "An admirable effort, but ultimately pointless." Again, with a speed that belied his size, Gang Orca shot forward. Not towards Kyoka, though, but towards the front of the crane. Kyoka attempted to intercept him, but he leapt, easily clearing Kyoka, and landed on top of the operator's cab, right next to the crane's massive winch.
He raised a hand to smash the winch and drop the shipping container dozens of feet to the ground, when Nezu's voice rang out, "Setsuna Tokage has escaped! The hero team wins!"
Kyoka could have fainted in relief.
---
Kugo Sakamata finally allowed himself to smile as the bus carrying his opponents took off back towards the center of U.A's campus. While he had been told to put his all into testing the students, he was very pleased to see that they passed. And if giving his all had meant playing up the overconfident villain persona, well, no one needed to be the wiser.
Even though he had only had her as an intern for a few days, Heartsong had truly impressed him in the time they had together, and had continued to do so during the final exam. She was on the top of his list for sending a work study request to. Hopefully she would even agree to sidekick for him before she inevitably started her own agency.
Anima, Tentacole, and Lizardy had not been slouches either. Lizardy had managed to fit her entire body through a hole in a shipping container no larger than his pinky finger. Granted his fingers were a bit larger than most, but it was still an impressive feat. She had looked well out of it after the match, which made sense given how hard she pushed herself.
Meanwhile, Tentacole was nearly as strong as Kugo himself was. He hadn't expected having his quirk reduced to three quarters to affect his strength that much, but he had definitely noticed it when grappling with Tentacole. It was only inexperience on the boy's part that had allowed Kugo to use leverage to toss him to the side later in the battle.
Most surprisingly, Anima actually had a serious arm on him. The single punch that the timid boy had delivered had actually hurt. Kugo had simply been putting on an act of not even being inconvenienced to play up his villainous persona, but he knew that he was going to have quite a bruise come the morning. Beyond that, he had never run into a naturopathic quirk that had actually managed to take control of him before, even if briefly. That boy could be something special if he put his mind to it.
While he (and presumably the other heroes) had been instructed to not go easy on the students, he felt that he and Wash had managed to strike a fine balance between thoroughly testing them and completely breaking their spirits. Although, now that he thought about it, he couldn't be certain if Wash had been playing up a villainous persona like he had, or if he had been cackling like a madman for real.
It was often difficult to tell with that man.
The remaining heroes that would test 1-A, however, Kugo was certain that they wouldn't hedge their efforts in favor of the students. Yoroi Musha had a dangerous look in his eyes whenever his former intern was brought up, Hawks followed the instructions of the commission to the letter, and Endeavor never gave anything less than one hundred percent. If anything, his son being one of the students he was testing made it even more likely for Endeavor to go as hard as possible.
And that wasn't even counting the 1-B students. While Crust might err on the side of giving the students some extra leeway, Best Jeanist was far too straight-laced to go against the commission, Snatch was never good with students or children to begin with, Shishido was an asshole, and Hawks was still Hawks.
Even though Kugo could have returned to his agency, he decided to stay and watch the remaining exams, at least for class 1-A. After all, he figured, it would give him a heads up on deciding which, if any, of the other students he might want to take on as work study students. And it wasn't everyday that he got to see other heroes in the top ten go all out.
But the real reason, one that he wouldn't admit to anyone else, was that he wanted to be present in case anything went too wrong in any of the other matches. All Might may have still been a teacher at U.A, but he was retired now, and no match for any of the top ten. And all of the next three fights could go very wrong, very quickly. Kugo wanted to make sure no kids were hurt if they did.