The sun was beating down on the training grounds, but the mood was freezing cold. Aizawa's threat of expulsion hung over us like a guillotine.
"Uraraka Kanata," Aizawa said, his voice like gravel. "You finished first in the entrance exam. Step into the circle."
I felt the entire class shift their focus to me. Twenty pairs of eyes—some curious, some competitive—followed me as I walked into the white-painted ring. Bakugo looked like he wanted to set me on fire, and the girl with the ponytail was watching with an analytical stare.
"In middle school, what was your best result for the soft-ball throw?" Aizawa asked, tossing a ball from hand to hand.
"About sixty-seven meters," I answered, rolling my shoulders. "Give or take. I didn't want to break any windows."
"Try using your Quirk this time," Aizawa deadpanned, throwing the ball at my chest. I caught it with one hand. "Anything goes as long as you stay in the circle. Show me what 'First Place' actually means."
I weighed the ball. I looked at Ochaco, who gave me a nervous but encouraging double thumbs-up. She hadn't gone yet; nobody had. I was the guinea pig.
'Right. Time to establish the baseline,' I thought.
I didn't just touch the ball. I reached into that reservoir of Cursed Energy in my gut and pushed it outward. I didn't need a massive field for this—I needed a concentrated one. I created a high-pressure Anti-Gravity System tube, a localized corridor of zero-gravity that stretched out toward the horizon.
I wound up and threw the ball with everything my fourteen-year-old muscles could offer.
As soon as the ball left my fingertips, it entered the "weightless" zone. Without the drag of gravity or the usual resistance of the air inside my field, the ball didn't just fly; it accelerated like a bullet. It became a white streak, a blur of motion that disappeared toward the city-scape training area.
But, as I knew, my field wasn't infinite. About fifteen meters out, the ball hit the edge of my Cursed Energy's reach.
Suddenly, the ball "remembered" physics. Gravity reclaimed it, and the air resistance of the outside world slapped it back down. It didn't stop instantly, but the sudden transition caused it to wobble and arc sharply downward.
BEEP.
Aizawa held up his phone. [905.2 Meters]
The class went dead silent for a heartbeat before erupting.
"Nearly a kilometer?!" a kid with blonde hair and a black bolt in it (Kaminari) shouted. "That's insane! Is his quirk just super strength?"
"No, look at the way the ball moved," the girl with the ponytail (Yaoyorozu) countered, her eyes narrow. "It didn't arc until much later. He's manipulating the environment around the object."
I walked out of the circle, wiping a bit of sweat from my forehead. Maintaining that high-density corridor, even for a second, felt like holding back a heavy door with one finger.
"Good start," Aizawa said, though he didn't look impressed. "Ochaco, you're next."
I passed my sister on the way back. "The air is a bit thin up there," I joked. "Try not to lose the ball."
"Watch me!" she whispered, her face set in a look of fierce determination. She stepped into the circle, touched the ball, and... well, she sent it to the moon. When Aizawa showed the 'Infinity' symbol on his screen, the class actually screamed.
"Infinity?!" Iida yelled, his arm-chopping reaching a frantic speed. "The Uraraka twins are monsters!"
The rest of the tests were a grind.
For the 50-meter dash, I tilted my personal gravity field forward, literally "falling" toward the finish line at an angle that ignored the wind. I clocked 3.02 seconds.
For the standing long jump, I simply negated my weight at the peak of my leap and drifted across the entire sandpit, much to the annoyance of Bakugo, who was currently trying to explode his way to a win.
Through it all, I kept an eye on Midoriya. The kid looked like he was vibrating apart. He hadn't used his Quirk once, and we were down to the final events. I watched the drama unfold—Aizawa erasing his Quirk, the lecture about "potential," and then the final throw.
BOOM.
The shockwave from Midoriya's finger hit us all the way at the sidelines. 705.3 meters.
"He... he only broke one finger?" I muttered, leaning against the fence. That was some high-level grit.
Then, the explosion.
"DEKU! EXPLAIN YOURSELF, YOU BASTARD!"
Bakugo lunged. I instinctively flared my Cursed Energy, ready to drop a "Gravity Anchor" on the ground between them to stop him, but Aizawa's capture scarf was faster. The man looked like a demon with his hair floating and eyes glowing red.
"Stop making me use my Quirk," Aizawa hissed. "I have dry eye."
Once the "Rational Deception" was revealed and the expulsion threat was lifted, the class practically deflated in relief. I looked at the final rankings.
I was in 1st Place, having consistently high scores across all eight trials. Yaoyorozu was 2nd, Todoroki was 3rd, and Bakugo was 4th. Midoriya was dead last, but he was still breathing.
"First place again, Kanata!" Ochaco cheered, wiping her forehead. "You're on a roll!"
"Yeah, well, being on a roll is exhausting," I said, putting my hands in my pockets. "I'm going to need at least three mochi after this to recover my brain cells."
As we walked back to the locker rooms, I felt Aizawa's gaze on my back. He hadn't said anything, but I knew he was watching the way I manipulated my "field" without touching things.
'He's trying to figure out the logic of my power,' I thought. 'Let him. Even I haven't figured it all out yet.'