As I looked up, the great wall filled my vision. Beyond were a few skyscrapers, just barely poking above the top. I knew there were dozens more, just short enough to be hidden. An entire fake city. Our playground.

I stood in a small area with a group of other young, intrepid wannabe heroes as Present Mic went over the rules one last time. Behind me, a tall, muscular boy with glasses and engines coming out of his legs was admonishing another boy, short, with green, curly hair and freckles. I knew not what they spoke of. It didn't much matter to me. I was singularly focused on passing this test.

The countdown began. Next to me, there was a smug-looking blonde guy doing feminine stretches, as if to prepare. I think I heard him speaking French earlier. On my other side, there was a cute brown-haired girl with a round face and rosy cheeks, taking deep breaths and staring ahead at the wall.

"Nervous?" I asked her. Her pupils contracted and she bounced in surprise, making a cute little squeak. "Y-yeah, but…" She smiled and gave me a thumbs-up. "Let's do our best!"

I nodded. "Of course. Good luck to you."

The countdown reached zero, and dozens of boys and girls began sprinting into the city at full speed, eager to compete and fight and emerge on top. The green curly-haired boy suddenly made a frantic noise behind me, and rushed to catch up. It was only me left outside the gate.

I sighed, cracked my knuckles, and teleported in.

The material beneath my feet changed to the dark pavement of a city road. Buildings rose up around me. Gasps from behind me, as the few leaders skidded to a stop.

"He just appeared in ahead of us!"

"That's an insane quirk!"

I quickly teleported three more times into various locations, scanning side streets and alleyways for robots before coming up short and teleporting elsewhere. Occasionally, I could hear the sounds of another student, looking through my area too. They were all spreading out, looking for the robots. But I could search faster than any of them.

As I searched, teleporting from street to street, my mind raced to come up with a plan. The robots are massive, and solid metal. They're not soft flesh like a person. I can't defeat them with my usual routine.

Could I teleport them into the sky, making them fall from high enough that they were destroyed upon impact? No, they were too big. I'd never teleported anything that big before. It would take a tremendous amount of effort and time, something I was already running out of here. And as for the effort…even if I managed to teleport one entire robot, I would be too tired to do it again. Those points would be all I would earn.

Then it came to me. The robots weren't one solid object, they were made up of moving parts! If I could separate those parts in my mind, I could teleport some of them off the main robot…and if they were important parts, the robot would stop working. It would be "disabled." And I would get points.

When I hit the next alley, I got a chance to confirm my theory.

A huge robot loomed ahead of me, green, with shining red orbs on its "face" that appeared like eyes. It had two arm-like appendages, as well. It sort of rolled toward me in a menacing fashion.

I raised my hands and focused my eyes on the arms, concentrating. A purple aura surrounded the place where the arms met the body, from its "shoulder" to its "armpit". And then the arms disappeared, teleporting to the ground below where I had meant to send them.

The robot stumbled, and I now had a view of the wires that dangled freely out of the empty arm sockets. I teleported a few of the wires to the ground, and the robot's eyes went dark. It fell, no longer working.

I allowed myself to smile in elation for a second before teleporting out. I was already behind. It had taken me too long to get just one. I needed to move quickly.

I continued on through streets in this manner, finding many more robots and doing the same thing. I wasn't keeping exact track of my points, like I overheard many other students doing, but I was around the number of thirty or so. I didn't think I was doing terrible, but I could have been doing better.

And time was running out.

The next alley I teleported into contained a robot, all right. A big one, one of the three-pointers. And it was sitting on top of a girl's leg.

She was gripping her leg, trying to wrench it free from under the robot, but screamed in pain and stopped trying, her eyes jammed shut, her face clenched up. She had vaguely pink skin and curly, even pinker hair, with two cute little yellow horns jutting out of the curls. She saw me, and gritted her teeth in some kind of confusing reaction. Her eyes were huge and dark, with tiny, faint pupils of light.

"I think my leg's broken," she told me, her voice shaky. The robot made a frightening mechanical sound, almost like a growl. It didn't budge off of her.

I needed to move on. I didn't have time for this. But…

This is what you wanted to do, remember? Why you wanted to get into UA in the first place. Don't be stupid, Kyousuke.

I tried to think of what to do. I couldn't just disable the robot by getting at its arm wires. I mean, I could, but it would just stop working on top of the girl. That wouldn't get the robot off of her.

I noticed that the robot's metal had been worn through in the space around where the girl's leg was trapped. "Hey, what's your quirk?" I asked her. The robot growled again, and we both cringed at the noise.

"I can make acid that burns through things," she told me. Her voice was thin with pain. "But this armor is so thick…"

An idea came to me. "I can do something to help," I told her. "On my signal, crawl backwards and away. Hop on one foot if you have to. Just get away from the robot."

"Idiot! How am I going to get away from the robot if it's on TOP of me!"

"Wear down that space with your acid a little more. And do it in a line."

The girl's face seemed to relax, and she nodded. I wondered what she saw in my own face that put her at ease. Did I appear confident? I didn't exactly feel confident.

She began to burn the robot further, and the thing growled again. She did it in a line like I told her to. And as a result, she was creating a removable section. A section that I could work with.

"Okay," I said. "You ready? I'm about to give you the signal." I raised my hand, and a purple glow formed around that section of the robot. "One, two…THREE!"

The section teleported away; I moved it behind me. The girl was free, and she began scrambling backwards, clenching her teeth in pain, dragging her dead leg. But she wasn't being fast enough.

The section of the robot had been large and important enough to both disable it and make it lose its balance. The machine was now swaying this way and that, getting ready to make a decision about where it was going to fall.

And it looked as if it would fall forward. Right on top of the girl. And she was being too slow.

I look back on that moment and realize that was the first time I didn't think before moving, before teleporting. I simply…acted.

And it was wonderful.

I teleported in next to her, scooped her up in my arms, and began running as fast as I could away from the collapsing machine.

"Hey! Wha…watch it! What are you doing!"

She made noises of protest that I ignored. She was heavy, but I wasn't about to say anything about that.

The robot fell to the ground behind us with a boom, causing dust to erupt into the air. We coughed, closing our eyes for a moment, waiting for the cloud to die down. When it was over, I looked at the girl I was cradling, one arm under her upper back, another under her knees. Her arms had wrapped around my torso at some point. When had that happened?

We stared into each other's eyes for a weird second. Strangely dark eyes against my own purple ones.

"Sorry about that," I said sheepishly. "I just…couldn't think of anything else to do."

The girl's face was blank and dazed. "It's…okay," she muttered, not looking away from my eyes.

"Here," I said, putting her down and leaning her against my left shoulder. Her right arm wrapped around me. "I'll walk you."

So we went out of the alley, skirting the section of the robot I had teleported, her limping, me walking slowly. The timer ran out.

"Dammit," the girl said, rubbing her forehead. "I don't know if I got enough points. Everything went wrong."

"I don't think I got enough either," I said, truthfully.

"Is your quirk teleportation? Why didn't you just teleport me instead of picking me up and running away like that?"

"Uh…well, I, uh…"

"Just wanted me in your arms, huh?" She suddenly had the twinkling glow of teasing in her eyes, and I felt heat rush to my face.

"No! It's just, well…I can't exactly teleport other people. Just myself, and small to medium-sized objects. Once picking you up, if I had teleported away instead of running, you would have just kinda…dropped to the ground, in the same place. Psshhh…" I made a sound effect with the side of my mouth, pushing my palm downward in a way of showing how she would have fallen.

The girl giggled, putting her free hand over her mouth. "Ah, sorry then. I guess you did save my life. Maybe I should be more grateful, hmm?" She leaned in a little closer to my face.

"What's your name?" I asked.

"Mina Ashido. Yours?"

"Kyousuke Tezuka. I'm glad to have met you, Ashido."

Her eyes widened, and she took a little gasping breath. Then she smiled and tilted her head, her eyes closed. "I'm glad to have met you too!"

We found ourselves in a clearing with tons of wrecked robots, and most of the other students, including the blonde-haired French boy, the bespectacled boy with the engine legs, the cute brown-haired girl with the round face, and…the green-haired boy, on the ground.

Recovery Girl was here already, tending to injuries. "We've got a broken leg here!" I called, waving to her.

The little woman walked over. "I'll just handle this quickly before tending to that fool of a boy over there," she said. "Kiss!"

She kissed Mina's leg, and after a second, Mina flexed it, then jumped away from me, smiling and bending it. "Good as new!" she exclaimed happily.

"Be careful," I warned, although I was smiling too. Her smile was infectious. "That sucked away some of your stamina, I bet. You're gonna want to take it easy."

"Don't you worry about little old me, Tezuka," she said, grinning. "I'm a pro at taking it easy!"

Recovery Girl was now busy tending to the green-haired boy on the ground, whose body looked completely mangled. The brown-haired girl seemed to be worrying over him as well.

What the hell even happened?

[TIMESKIP]

It was evening in my house, and the results of the entrance exam had come. I went to check the mail, pulling out a few other things addressed to my parents, as well as the envelope with UA's seal on it. Putting that in my left hand, I teleported back in to the kitchen, dropping the other letters on the dinner table.

"Stuff for you, Dad," I told him.

He looked up from his food. "Ah, right. Thanks, Kyousuke."

My little sister was looking at the UA letter in my left hand, her eyes sparkling. "It's the results!" she exclaimed, dazzled. "Do you think you got in?"

I shrugged. "We'll see."

My mother, with her back turned at the stove, simply said, "Whatever happens, it'll be okay, sweetie."

"Yes, yes, I know. I've prepared myself for disappointment and all that."

I teleported into my bedroom, holding the letter up to my face. My sister had been the only one to really get excited about it, which was par for the course. My parents…they supported me and fed me and everything, and all in all I had a stable childhood, but…they were both quirkless. There must have been a recessive trait for a teleportation quirk in both of them, though, because of what I received and what my sister did. My sister, bless her heart, she was only eight, and could only teleport small objects, not her own body like I could. And I think my parents resented me a little, or perhaps thought I was some kind of freak. Whatever the case, it wasn't enough to damage our relationship, although it did create some distance.

I set the letter down on my desk, having no idea what to expect. If it was rejection, I was prepared to handle that. I got good grades. I could get into a normal high school if I needed to.

I opened the letter, and a hologram erupted from it, causing me to shriek and scoot my chair away from the desk in surprise. My eyes widened upon seeing All Might.

"Young Tezuka!" the Symbol of Peace exclaimed. "You received 31 points for defeating the fake villains in the entrance exam! This…was not close to the highest score."

I sighed in defeat. I wondered what the point of sending me a hologram of All Might that directly addressed me was, if only to reject me.

"But!" All Might exclaimed, causing me to look back up. "There was a twist to the test that we did not tell any of you! Another set of points, decided by a panel of judges! Rescue Points!"

A scoreboard appeared on the screen next to him. "You worked together with Young Ashido to save her from being crushed by one of the robots! For this, you have received 30 Rescue Points, and she has received 20! You both pass!"

My eyes widened, and I brought both fists up to my chest in disbelief. Is this really true? Is this how I get in?

All Might was not done. "What kind of hero school would UA be if we denied people who risked their own lives and their own standing in the rankings to save others? Saving others is what being a hero is all about! Thank you, young Tezuka! We will be seeing you soon!"

The hologram faded out.

I was over the moon. Not just because I got in, but because of what he had said. It was what I'd believed for so long, and what I'd hated about the entrance exam upon hearing the rules. Even though I had gone along with it and played their game for a little while, focusing on destroying robots because that was how I knew to get points, I couldn't have dismissed Mina trapped under that robot. That would not have been…heroic. And to see UA acknowledging that…to see ALL MIGHT acknowledging that…it made me feel worthy. Like I had truly earned my spot at UA.

Because, when you're born with an ability as strong as mine, you owe it yourself and the people around you to be a hero. It's not a want. It's a duty. A responsibility. And I intended to fulfill it.

Plus, that Mina was kinda cute…