I think that, if I had to tell the story about my life, this would probably be a good place to start or at least start an important part of the story because I am about to face one of the most important challenges of my life, the practical exam for the entrance to the Yuuei Academy.

My name is Nakahara Takumi and I am currently a student aiming to enter U.A Highschool. Like many people out there I am not the most interesting person you can find, but I like to make myself known as someone persistent and that has things clear in life having said that I do not like to be taken as a serious person, I consider myself someone with a good sense of humor.

There is not a tragic background story behind my intentions to be a hero, only a promise that I made to someone a long time ago and I have planned to fulfill it whatever the cost, If someone want to be a hero, and a very good one then there is no better place to learn than U.A.

Here I am at the entrance of U.A, I have to admit that it is an interesting building, the "H" shape it has is quite charming I must say, but above all it is impressive and even more with all the applicants entering the main building, you can see how they come from different schools all over Japan, like me, not just Tokyo.

"Alright Takumi, the day has come, don't do anything stupid and everything will be just fine" — I told myself to try to hide my nerves. I doubt I am the only one with this feeling, you could see people sweating from the sole fact of entering U.A, can't say I blame them, I am just like them.

I started walking towards the main building where I later found myself in an auditorium where they were going to give a talk explaining the exam guidelines. As soon as I got there I went for my seat, I had one indicated for me in the letter they gave me, apparently students from the same school next to each other, but I don't think I'll find someone from my school here it would be odd since my school is quite far from Tokyo, really far.

In the meantime, I got a message from my mom —"Takumi, we wish you the best of luck in the exam, we know you can do it." I smiled a little when reading the message, my family always supported me, I should not disappoint them after everything they did for me. I was about to answer back but I couldn't think of anyway to say so I just decided to stay focus on the test to come.

After a few minutes a professor appeared, he was in charge of explaining everything about the practical exam. The surprising thing was that the professor was none other than Present Mic, although he did not seem to animate the audience much with his speech. In view of the silent response of the public, he went straight to the point: The exam will be held in a replica of a city, there will be "villains" hanging around the city and we must "take care" of them, there are 3 types of villains and each was worth points different between 1 and 3 according to their difficulty and it was also forbidden to attack other participants. The villains were some type of robots, designed by them or so he told us, and they shouldn't present much of a threat to our safety.

"It seems very basic, I guess with the right preparations I can adapt my quirk for the exam." — I though while reading the pamphlet they gave us about the exam.

As soon as Present Mic finished, someone raised his hand. "Excuse me, can I ask a question? The booklet states that there are four types of villains"— that caused look at the pamphlet again, because I don't remember reading that — "Oh shit he is right, it was in the next page". He continued "These kinds of mistakes are unacceptable for a top-notch academy like U.A! We are here because we want to follow the path of model heroes! Besides, you, the curly haired boy! Can't you calm down for a moment? You are distracting me and the other participants, if you can't take the trouble to take this seriously then leave" He said it with a voice tone that echoed throughout the room. I looked at that poor dude who got called out, and well he was shivering, I guess the nerves are getting to him really bad. Can't say I'm surprised, all kinds of people come to give this test, and of course they are gonna be exaggeratedly serious, I am one of them, but I wouldn't embarrass anyone like that.

"Okay thanks for reminding me! The fourth type of villain you will find is worth zero points. That villain is just an obstacle that we will throw to you to make the exam more interesting and will only appear when there is a crowd, you'll recognize it when you see it."

"Thank you very much! I apologize for the interruption!" The boy said aloud as he bowed and then sat down.

I do not know how useful it was to find out about the fourth type of villain since we don't know what it looks like and destroying it does not give us points, maybe I will find out when I see one or destroy it by chance, whatever the case, I don't care much about it, I gotta focus on getting points.

"Well that's all from me! I'll leave my listeners with our school motto. PLUS ULTRA! Break a leg everyone!"

And with that the introductory presentation of the practical exam is over. I took out the card in pocket which had my location for the test indicated, apparently, I got test location E. I got up and exhaled deeply. " All right, time to do this."

It took me about 10 minutes to change into an appropriate outfit for the exam and reach my respective Testing location. Once there I took the trouble to subtly review the other participants, it seems that most are male, but still you notice the large number of girls. These are some of my rivals and maybe possible classmates, I know it is not the best time to observe their skills and get to know them, but I could not help but wonder what kind of quirks they had and how much they have trained to get here. I began to observe some of them carefully, for example, there was a boy who had completely black skin but white hair, then I saw a girl who seemed to have some sort of plugs that hanged from her earlobes, also another person with a transformation individuality that seemed a minotaur. After checking out some of them I could tell just by looking how some of their quirks might work, but for others It is simply impossible to know, especially if they don't have any physical trait that reveals their quirk, I suppose I fall into that category as well since I look like a normal person till I activate it.

It took a long time to master my quirk at a level where I am able use it agilely in combat without causing mayor problems to my body. Most of the times, when someone asks about my quirk is hard for me to explain since I am not very good at it and it causes misunderstandings of how it works so I rather show them instead.
I can modify my body, that doesn't mean creating new limbs or new eyes, maybe the word modify is not the right one, control might be a better word to explain it. I can increase the volume of my muscles, improve my vision, heal my wounds and much more, the only thing I need for it is that there is oxygen around my body so that means I can use my individuality without problems almost anywhere. Obviously, it has its limitations, any change that I apply to my body is not permanent, even if I heal a broken bone this will be temporary, also using it constantly and makes my limbs feel heavy and my vision is lost little by little. In order to make changes to my body at my whim I had to learn the anatomy of the human body from head to toe, and to know what roles all parts of the body fulfill. It was a very hard learning process, but I went with it and this test will tell me if the efforts of these years paid off.

Having finished my stretches I approached the giant door that would open at the beginning of the exam. It would be nice to have some kind of clock that indicates how much time is left so I could modify my body in advance since it takes me a few seconds to do it, and I must take as much advantage of time as I can, and I am pretty sure this goes for everyone since quirks put some kind of strain in the body when used for long periods of time.

"I guess It's just a matter of wai…"

"And begin…"

As soon as I heard that my face changed to a confused one. What was that exactly? Was that the signal to start? I was not the only one like that, everyone had more or less the same and thoughts.

"What wrong? Are you waiting for a countdown? The test has started! Run! Run!"

"Damn it!" I yelled as I entered as fast as I could to the test location.

Many people had entered before me and had not yet modified my body, I decided to make myself faster instead of using brute force first since I did not see any enemies nearby and needed to cover more ground, so I modified my muscles to make me even more fast than what I normally am.

They were not joking when they said that the test area was a replica of a city, this place is huge and looks too real, I wonder if they will have someone with a quirk capable of creating such places but now is the time to think about this.

It did not take me long to find one of the villains, it was a robot larger than a human being maybe 3 or 4 times bigger and he was heading towards me.
Excellent.

Modify my right arm with enough power to destroy it in one hit and then I aimed to what looked like the abdomen.

"This is only the first of many!" I shouted as I blew it to pieces. My fist went right through it but it hurt a little, well it is to be expected I am punching metal after all.

That felt better than I thought, but it's not enough, I must go for more. Seeing the number that was engraved on his arm I saw that it was only worth 2 points. I have to keep moving.

After dealing that blow I change my arm back to normal and kept running. Whenever I crossed some robots while running I destroyed them as swiftly accurately as possible so that I didn't take too much time. I remember we had a time limit of 10 minutes, I was starting to regret not having a stopwatch with me. Even after running for a while I couldn't find many villains and I was starting to get worried.

I turned in a corner where I reached what looked like an avenue and there were still several villains, but they were being destroyed easily by the few people that where in there, I had to hurry. I focused on 2 villains, one of them was a one-pointer and the other one was a two-pointe, the distance between them was short so I jumped quickly and stretch my arms to try to destroy them by tearing them apart. After the jump one of them was still standing, I hurried to jump again, but someone destroyed it before me just when I was about to hit it.

"Hey that one was mine!" I yelled without even being able to identify who stole it.

"Sorry, they didn't say anything about not being able to take the villains from others," exclaimed feminine voice. It was the girl who had plugs hanging from her ears. — "Try to hit them more precisely next time" she said while running somewhere else.

That left me with a bitter taste in my mouth and I would like to get revenge, but this is not the time, I have to get points. I continued running seeing that there were no more villains left. After running desperately for a few seconds, I came to a place that looked like a small square where I found a group of robots, it almost looked like they were forming a circle.

"You are all mine!" — I yelled after looking around to see if I was alone.

I made my arms and legs ready for the battle, I changed my agile form to a more muscular one. I approached as fast as I could then I jumped and landed on one of them, destroying it instantly after that that I jumped again aiming to land in middle of the group where I felt I could do more damage and a once there a blow was enough for each of them as long as I hit a vital point, I could feel the metal in my hands while seeing debris coming from the robots flying after every punch, I wasn't holding back on them at all.

Surprisingly the villains fought back, they were a bit slow but still I had to dodge a good number of blows and that took me more time to take care of them, surely they were not made to do much damage. I destroyed one, then another and continued like this until I was done with all of them.

I looked at my hands, I was bleeding, while not excessively, there were some blood drops falling to the ground. I didn't focus much on making my skin more resistant, only on the power to destroy them.

As I recovered my breath and prepared to continue on my way I heard a familiar voice.

"Four minutes remaining!"

What? The time had passed way faster than what I expected. I'm against time run Takumi, run! I continued running around the city only to find remains of robots scattered all over the place, there must be some still remaining. At that same moment a villain appears from a passageway between buildings and without thinking twice I closed our distance and threw and uppercut causing his head to fly away. He was a three-pointer, very well that helps a lot. The problem is that I do not know how many points the others have, I stopped counting a while back because it was distracting me, I have to be among the first 20 at least, I have to be 100% sure that I will pass the test, I can't settle with this, I have to aim for more.

I looked around and saw people in the same situation as mine, desperate to get more points. There is no time to pay attention to them, I have to look for more. I prepared my legs for a high jump, modified my nerve endings and muscles to achieve what I had in mind. I wanted to jump to the roof of one of the buildings next to me and see if I could find some villains from up there. I looked towards my goal that was a building between 25 to 30 floors to my right. I knelt down and focused as much as I could in the strength placed on my legs never taking my eyes off the top of the building, where I was aiming to land.

I made a countdown in my mind. "3 ... 2 ... 1" — I took a deep breath and then —"Come on!" I announced as wanting everyone to see me, although that was not my intention. I could feel how the ground sank a little after making the jump, maybe I left a crack on the floor.

It was going up at a very high speed, but not enough to disorient me from my landing zone. After I passed the twentieth floor I started to lose speed, but that was good since I didn't want too high but before I knew it, I had already exceeded the size of the building. I thought this was higher, I turned around midair and pulled a strong blow facing the sky sky to help me slow down. It worked, I began descending and just where I had planned, I prepared for the landing. My feet felt the ground, but the fall was stronger than I thought as soon as I touched the floor I lost my balance and I forced myself to put both hands on the floor, so I wouldn't hit my face with the ground. Aside from that and a weird stomach pain I had the landing was a success.

"I have to practice those landings"

I was almost in the center of the city, so I could go with ease to any part of the city next to me by jumping though buildings, although I would prefer not to go far, I have to concentrate in the enemies that are close. I couldn't see any villain, but if I could hear sounds of battles going on somewhere, there were coming from the north and east of where I was standing. The battles to the east seemed closer, I'll go there.

I started jumping from building to building, which was much easier than jumping from the floor to the roof. Just when I was about to arrive I heard a loud sound and made the floor shake, I guess it was stronger for me because I was in the roof to those below me, but still it was very strong, what kind of quirk can make that and why didn't I feel it before? Or maybe whoever caused that went over the limit. Those thoughts changed quickly when the floor began to rumble constantly, not as strong and loud as the first time, but now they seemed like footsteps. This is definitively not a quirk, it must be something else. And my doubt was answered right away as I saw the cause of it. The fourth faux villain. It was huge, much bigger than every other type of villain, he was even taller than the building I was standing on, it was far, but I could still notice how everyone fled from it. Of course, that villain is not worth any points at all, it is a threat not worth facing, even If I wanted to I couldn't think of any way of defeating that thing.

It was coming towards my direction, but it was still a few blocks away from me, whatever action I am about to take I should decide it now. Do I keep looking for more villains or start running away from that thing? "Fuck it, I'll do both, I don't have time to waste"

"Less than 2 minutes remaining!" It was heard throughout the city.

Now I'm at a crossroad. I looked everywhere trying to find some remaining villain I could defeat, but I saw nothing only the huge one that was approaching. "I might be fucked if I don't do something quick" — Then I asked myself, what if it was a lie that the fourth faux villain is not worth any points. It's true that they said that it was only an obstacle to avoid, but look at its size, it has to be worth some type of points, at this point there not much I can do. I convinced myself to try something, but it was a fact that I could not stop it with conventional attacks, I must do something different. I still have some time before he gets here, I decided on a crazy plan, but it was still la plan nonetheless.

I jumped down from the roof of the building I was standing, this time having a better landing. As soon as I touched the ground I took a better looked at the robot, the robot looked bigger from the ground and he was colliding with all the structures that were close to it destroying them partially when passing next to them, but none of them fell completely, I do not know how much damage I can do to it, but maybe one of those building might do the trick. I enhanced both arms to make them more muscular, the grew in size and I lost speed but that was exactly what I was going for. I began to destroy the exterior columns of the building where I used to be, only the ones facing the street. Since the robot was gonna come this way, he is bound to clash with the building and by making it weak it should fall easily on it, that was more or less my plan, I am not an expert on architecture or engineering so there a chance that all of my effort won't pay off. I destroyed all of the columns as fast as I could, time was not on my side, I needed to hurry.

"Less than a minute remaining!" — Present Mic yelled and this time he did it with a more excited voice tone, as if waiting for something to happen.

The robot was about to reach the building where I left a trap for him, my arms were beginning to get really heavy and the skin color turning darker, good thing I managed to finish on time but this is my limit I don't have anything else under my sleeve in case this doesn't work. I wonder if this going to be enough? It had to be.

Well, I don't wanna be here for when it happens. "I am out of here"— I said to myself while starting to run in the opposite direction.

I went to where the other participants were running, I was the closest one to the villain, so I had to speed up a little. If my plan worked as expected, then I had to make as much distance as possible between me and the robot or the mountain of rubbles might get to me.

While I was running, I heard a loud sound, different from that of the robot footsteps, so I looked back and I could see how the whole building fell on top of it. It was a splendid sight, sadly it didn't last, because even though the villain received a such a tremendous blow or what it look like one, it was not enough to stop him for more than a couple of seconds. The small smile that had appeared on my face disappeared and me and the other participants who also stopped to look back started fleeing again. "Shit how tough is that thing supposed to be!?"

"Time is up everybody!" and as soon as we heard that, the robot stopped automatically.

Everyone that was fleeing from the robot, myself included, took some seconds to look at it. I already mentioned but his size was really impressive, how can they even afford this?

After that I was just too tired to continue standing so decided to sit down for a few minutes, I sat on the floor with my legs stretched out my sight set on the sky, I don't know how good my score is, but I don't feel bad about it, I did everything I could and I had it within my reach, if that was not enough to pass the exam then those who pass must be awesome people, my regards to them. Still I have hope that I'll get a possible result.

"It seems that not even throwing a building on it is enough to stop it, U.A sure makes them tough." Exclaimed a boy. "But why did he try to destroy it? that villain was not worth a single point" another one asks. "I do not know, maybe he saw something that we missed, I doubt it matters, I got a good amount of points and I feel confident" he replies.

"Yo guys, you do realize I am sitting a few feet away from you, right? Well, they can say whatever they want, at least I tried something unlike you guys who were just running from it.

I got up after a few minutes and went to the exit of the test location, it was the same door we used to enter. There we found a teacher who told us that those who had any kind of lesser or serious injury should pay a visit Recovery Girl.I did have some minor injuries even if that was my fault, so I guess I'll pay her a visit.

I went to the changing rooms where I changed back to my school uniform and then went for the exit, on the way there me that they will send us a letter with the results of our written test as well as the practical test. While leaving U.A I got to see some students who looked worried, confident, some even laughed as if nothing had happened, they must be very confident of their abilities and that only makes me doubt more about myself, even though I believed that I did well, but something that we all shared was the talk about the fourth faux villain who appeared in the final minutes of the test. From what little I heard is that in most situations they all fled the villain, others tried to fight it with no success at all, but there was only one case about a boy who managed to destroy the villain with a single punch but ended up damaging himself badly in the process. If what I heard was true, then that guy is seriously impressive but with such drawback I am not sure how that quirk is proper for a hero.

It had been an exhausting day, both mentally and physically. On my way to the train station I thought about everything I could have done better and I gotta admit it was such a letdown but at the same time I was comforted thinking about everything I had done well, especially the fact that not was able to destroy as many robots as I did, although I didn't ask myself about that, I just listen to other people's conversations gave me more confidence about my results, I still hope that the fourth faux villain was worth something even if I didn't manage to destroy it.

Once I arrived at the hotel where I was staying, I took a shower and packed my things before going to bed. My flight back was tomorrow afternoon, I still have classes to attend at my school and I can't wait to tell my family and friends how my exam went, I know some of my friends and classmates are also planning to go to other academies to heroes, but noone is aiming for U.A.

Whatever the results, I will accept them, I know that the risk of failing is not impossible, but I feel confident enough to tell my family and friends that I will succeed. In the end only, time will tell