It had been about a week since the entrance exam. Izuku had kept in contact with Ochako, and Himiko had forcefully introduced herself to his new friend. They video called quite a lot, and when it turned out that Ochako had rented an apartment in Musutafu, Himiko had basically demanded that she should spend a day with both of them.
They'd gone to the arcade, with Izuku somehow managing to obtain a plushie space battleship. He didn't even know what franchise it was from, but Ochako
loved it. He'd given it to her, which made Himiko get that grin again. He wasn't sure what was going on, but he knew Himiko was planning something.
Either way, he'd made a friend! Ochako! She was so nice, and friendly, and maybe he had a crush on her. Either way, it was way too early to tell for certain. Maybe he was just confusing the feeling of finally having a friend his own age (who wasn't a super troublesome sister) with that of a crush.
One of these days, he was going to turn Himiko's hair some color she hated as a prank if she didn't let up on the teasing. That, or he'd turn her shampoo into oil. Renovate was flexible like that.
All Might had texted both of them that he'd be busy for this entire week, and he'd talk with them after their results came out. Maybe he was working on a classified heroic mission.
Anyway, he was just eating lunch with Himiko when his mom went to check the mail. "Izuku! Himiko! Your UA test results just arrived!"
Oh dear. They both got their letters, and sat in the living room.
"You should go first, Izuku," Himiko started.
Izuku was still plenty nervous, but with her encouragement, he opened the letter.
"I am here, as a projection! Young Midoriyas, I apologize for not contacting you sooner, but with great power comes a great deal of paperwork! You see, you're looking at UA's newest faculty member!"
Izuku stared in shock. This was a surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one. He really had grown under All Might's training. Him, teaching Izuku to become a pro hero? He'd dreamed about that on more than one occasion.
He glanced at his sister, who was similarly shocked.
"What's the matter? Showboating? Wait, I have to do how many of these things?"
"Anyway, young Midoriyas! This recording contains both results! Young Izuku, you scored in the 98th percentile of overall scores on the written exam! You have more than passed that portion. Young Himiko! You scored in the 87th percentile, and you passed! Congratulations to both of you!"
"And now, the practical. Young Midoriya, you earned 43 villain points in the practical, enough to pass. Young Himiko, you earned 24 villain points in the practical, which sadly isn't enough to get a seat in the hero course. Sorry."
Himiko was dejected, but not crushed. Her main reason for being a hero was to stay with Izuku and have something that they had in common. She'd said that if pressed, she was alright with staying in UA's General Studies course, but she'd do her best in the Sports Festival to try and get a seat in the heroics course.
"But you see, that's not all we were looking for! While you were out there fighting those bots, a panel of judges were observing you! Heroes aren't judged by combat alone!"
Here, the projection showed a split screen, with a montage of who they saved throughout the exam. Izuku's rescue of Ochako was shown, and Himiko was shown pulling people out of the path of the zero-pointer.
"Both of you are dedicated to saving lives, and the hero course could not pass that up! Therefore, there's a second category of points you earned - Rescue Points! For your actions, Izuku Midoriya, you've earned 60 rescue points! And you Himiko, have earned 34 rescue points! Congratulations! Both of you made it into the top 10 examinees who took the entrance exam."
Izuku had placed first, with a total score of 103. Himiko had placed eighth, with a score of 58. Izuku was delighted to note that Ochako had also gotten on the leaderboard, which meant she would also be joining the hero course.
Life was pretty good. Oh, he should probably check with Ochako and see about her class placement.
Well, as it turned out, all three of them were going to be in Class 1-A together. He hoped that he wouldn't have to deal with Bakugō's nonsense for another year, or that tall guy. He'd made plans with Himiko to meet up with Ochako before the first day, and all three of them walked to Class 1-A together.
Izuku noticed that the door was unusually wide and tall, but he supposed it was for accommodating various heteromorphic quirks. As he entered, he heard conversation.
"Don't put your feet on the desk!"
"Huh?"
"Don't you think it's rude to the upperclassmen who came before us and the people who made this desk?"
"I don't! Which fucking private school did you come from, you shitty side character?"
"I attended Soumei Private Academy, and I am Tenya Iida."
"Soumei, huh? So you're a fucking elite, is that right? Looks like I'll have fun crushing you, then."
"You're barbaric! Do you truly even aim to be a hero?"
So much for a peaceful school life. At least Himiko and Ochako were there.
When they entered, the tall boy turned towards Izuku, and didn't immediately start yelling at him. "Good morning! My name is Tenya Iida, I am from-"
"Soumei Private Academy, I heard. I'm Midoriya."
"Midoriya, you realized there was something more to the practical exam, didn't you? I misjudged you! I hate to admit it, but you are better than I am!" Here, he bowed, almost like a robot.
"If you mean the rescue points, I didn't actually realize anything. I just did what I thought was right."
"In that case, that makes you even more admirable! I-"
Suddenly, a very tired voice cut in. "If you're here to make friends, you should go somewhere else. This is the hero course."
Izuku turned around. There was a…no, that wasn't a giant caterpillar. It was a tired guy in a yellow sleeping bag.
"It took you lot eight seconds to quiet down. Time's limited. You kids aren't rational enough. I'm your homeroom teacher, Aizawa Shouta."
He got out a box of P.E. uniforms.
"Your uniform is labeled with your seat number. Put this on and go out to Training Ground Delta. There are signs on your way."
Here, Iida asked, "What about orientation? The entrance ceremony?"
"If you're going to be a hero, you don't have time for such leisurely events."
With that parting statement, he left the classroom.
There was utter silence, and then a mad dash to grab a uniform and head to the locker rooms.
After changing into his uniform, Izuku headed to where he saw Aizawa standing in the training ground. About half the class was already there, and the rest trickled in in the course of a few minutes.
"You kids have been doing these tests since middle school, right? Well, it's different this time. You'll be able to use your Quirks for these. Midoriya, you scored first on the practical, right?"
Izuku nodded his head.
"What was your farthest softball throw in meters?"
"About forty."
"Throw this softball. Do whatever you want, as long as you stay in the circle."
Now, this was interesting. Whatever he wanted? He should probably show off, to impress the teacher. He could just place the ball on the ground, and have the ground simply launch it as far as possible, but that didn't seem like it would get him the best score.
What if he made a gun?
That sounded promising, at least in terms of distance launched. How would he make a gun? What did he have available? He had concrete, which the training ground was made from, and…nothing else. Alright, he could work with this. He had an idea, and some previous experience.
He placed his hand on the ground, and willed a cannon to rise from the ground. He used Renovate to filter out a lot of sand from the concrete, and placed it at the very end. He then loaded the ball through the muzzle onto the sand.
"I think we're going to need some hearing protection," he said. Thankfully, Aizawa had that nearby in the locker rooms, and everyone put it on.
Renovate had told him that this sand was almost pure silicon dioxide. He knew from past experiments that he could break chemical bonds without inputting any energy, but when reformed, they would still release energy, like normal. Izuku at first didn't know what to make of this, as that was the
most direct evidence he'd ever gotten that Quirks treat fundamental laws of the universe more like suggestions. Eventually, he'd just sort of accepted that his quirk could violate the Law of Conservation of Energy, and he might as well figure out if he could do anything useful with it.
As it turns out, he could. He'd experimented with this in the past, but his experiments all ended in explosions. By rapidly breaking and reforming the chemical bonds in an object or substance, he could turn it into an extraordinarily hot gas, which expanded at rates of over 1000 meters per second. In other words, a perfect propellant for a bullet - or a softball, in this case. Silicon dioxide in particular was useful, as it contained lots of oxygen, meaning there was
plenty of energy he could potentially release. Unfortunately, this also meant that to make sand into a rapidly-expanding hot gas, he'd have to heat it to extreme temperatures, well beyond the boiling point, which was roughly 2200 degrees Celsius, if he remembered correctly. He probably didn't.
He might as well go all the way and try for 100,000 degrees Celsius. If he did that, he definitely needed to reinforce the barrel, which he promptly did. He could also eke out some extra range if he constructed a ballistic shell around the ball, trying to minimize the drag it experienced. He might as well rifle the cannon barrel as well, if it helped out his score.
He angled the cannon to 45 degrees, and activated Renovate to turn the sand into propellant for the cannonball. Suddenly, there was a crack of thunder and what amounted to a flash of lightning as the ball was launched…quite far. Izuku's ears were left ringing, despite the ear protection.
Aizawa held up the counter for how far the ball had gone, and…wow, that was a good score. 10 kilometers was nothing to sneeze at, so he willed the cannon to sink back into the ground.
"So manly!" said a guy with red hair.
"We get to use our Quirks for this? This should be fun!" said a completely pink girl.
"Fun, you say? You have three years to become a pro hero, and with an attitude like that, you won't make it. Let's raise the stakes. Whoever comes in last place will be judged to have no potential and will be expelled."
That was enough to shock the class into silence.
"But isn't that unfair?"
"You think this is unfair? Natural disasters, villain attacks, big accidents. Japan is full of unfairness, and heroes are the ones called upon to resolve those situations. For the next three years, U.A. is going to give you one hardship after another. You've taken your first step into a larger world, and it isn't all sunshine and roses."
Everyone went to do the ball throw, sufficiently cowed by Aizawa's harsh words.
Bakugō had thrown his ball about 700 meters, and a guy made a glacier to launch the ball pretty far. Ochako had simply tapped the ball and sent it out of the atmosphere, which struck him as odd. She hadn't made
him leave the atmosphere, so something couldn't be right. She'd gotten the highest score on the ball toss out of everyone, with an infinity. Another girl
created a
cannon to shoot the ball about 2 kilometers. So, he still somehow ended up with the second-place score. Himiko had actually used his blood to turn into him, and threw the ball as hard as she could, about 50 meters.
Next up, was a 50 meter dash. Izuku used Renovate to essentially ride a speedy wave of concrete, coming in second place with 4.03 seconds, narrowly beating out Bakugō's time of 4.13 seconds. Bakugō was understandably mad about that. Himiko hadn't used his blood for the test, instead relying on her own fitness, with 6.42 seconds. Ochako had gotten 7.15 seconds, which was not good, but not really bad either.
Then, there was a grip strength test. Izuku simply used the ground to crush the grip strength device with over 30,000 Newtons of force. The grip tester read out 3569 kg, which
seemed correct. He didn't have a calculator on hand, so he couldn't say for sure. Almost everyone did about the same on this test, except for the cannon girl, who created a vice grip, and a guy with many arms, who got 540 kg.
There was a seated toe touch, which almost nobody did extraordinarily well on. Except Himiko, the pink girl and an invisible girl, who were all super flexible.
There was also a standing long jump, in which Ochako floated above the box, Bakugō launched himself across it, and Izuku just manipulated the ground to have him clear it. He tied for first with a few other people.
In the repeated side steps, Izuku just manipulated the ground to move him very quickly from either side. He was the only one, aside from Himiko, to do really well on these tests. He got first, and Himiko got second through her own fitness.
Next was the sit-up tests. They did this in halves of the class, with half holding down the legs of the other half, and then switching. He did 60 on his own, and then he used his quirk to move the ground under his back so that it was doing the sit ups for him. He did another 120 using his quirk, at which point Aizawa just told him, "Switch out, we need to get the other half done."
Lastly, the distance run. Izuku just used his quirk to ride a wave of concrete. The girl who made a cannon made a bike, and Iida was just good at running. Himiko just relied on her own fitness, and got a pretty good score. Him, Iida, and the creation girl tied for first. Bakugō had used his explosions to get a decent score, and the ice creation guy had overall done really well.
In any case, the final rankings looked something like this:
- Midoriya Izuku
- Yaoyoruzu Momo
- Todoroki Shōto
- Bakugō Katsuki
- Iida Tenya
- Tokoyami Fumikage
- Mezo Shoji
- Mashirao Ojiro
- Kirishima Eijirou
- Midoriya Himiko
- Ashido Mina
- Uraraka Ochako
- Asui Tsuyu
- Koji Koda
- Sato Rikido
- Aoyama Yuga
- Sero Hanta
- Kaminari Denki
- Jiro Kyoka
- Toru Hagakure
Here, Aizawa actually smiled a little bit. "Oh, and since all of you went beyond, nobody's getting expelled."
The invisible girl heaved a big sigh of relief. She was being hugged by both Himiko and the pink girl. Good, Himiko had made some friends.
"I'm surprised that more people didn't figure it out, it's a logical ruse," commented the girl with a creation Quirk. Izuku wanted to analyze that
so badly, because he was sure that there were a lot of drawbacks to such a versatile Quirk.
"You think it was a ruse? Midoriya, tell them," Aizawa said.
Izuku steeled his nerves, and said, "Aizawa expelled his entire class last year. It wasn't a trick."
The entire class paled.
"All of you have great potential to be heroes. I didn't expel any of you because of that potential. Being a pro hero is a dangerous job, and I don't want any of my students to be found in the obituaries after a few years of graduation. Anyway, you're all dismissed for today. Make sure to pick up a syllabus in the classroom."
"Wow, that was really nerve-wracking, Izuku. I really thought Aizawa was serious about expelling people," said Ochako.
"Well, he would have, if we didn't take it seriously enough. That's what happened to his last class."
Ochako looked very curious. "How did you know that?"
"Well, I've been coming to UA for the past ten months on weekends to help out with…a very classified project. I can't tell you any more about that, but I did happen to hear a lot of gossip between the teachers."
"Oh. So, Aizawa knew you knew about his expulsions?"
"Yeah, he'd seen me around the campus a few times, so I think he recognized me."
"Well…once Himiko finishes up with her new friends, is there anywhere that's good to eat around here, for a low price? Do you want to go together?"
Alright, you cannot mess this up. You are about to invite a girl over to your place. Himiko will be there, so just in case, you have a backup.
"W-well, my mom makes a lot of extra food for lunch. If you can, she'd be absolutely delighted to have you over."
"Um…if it's alright with you and her, I guess I could?"
Objective accomplished! New objective: Survive Himiko's teasing.