Midoriya Izuku, 14 Years Old. Quirk: Vibration.

That was the information that was written in Izuku's file when he signed up for the qualifications to enter the International Hero School. It might have seen like too little, but that actually showed just how bitter a struggle Izuku would have to endure. There was no point in collecting so much information when most of the candidates would be eliminated right from the first stage.

The qualification would last for six whole months, and Midoriya would reach fifteen before it was over. And as long as he avoided elimination, more and more would be added to his file, serving somewhat like a curriculum.

Which meant that, after reaching a certain point in the qualifications, even the failed students would be highly sought after by all kinds of other academies, labs and training institutions, allowing them a leg up on their dreams and making it so that their months of effort weren't wasted.

That was another reason why so many youngsters signed up for the tests.

"Do your best." Were the words Izuku's mother said when he left on that critical day.

Those few words were all that really was needed, since the hug she gave him expressed her feelings in a very eloquent way.

The place, or rather places, for the first test were actually somewhat of a secret. Izuku only received directions on the very same day he had to leave, and after following those directions (which included taking two trains), Izuku was faced with a big bus which had dark windows.

He entered the bus by showing his registration card to the driver, who checked it with a scanner before waving Izuku in.

He sat near the back and next to the right window. Izuku saw that a few other teenagers were inside the bus, but none of them seemed to want to talk. Bakugou wasn't there, but that wasn't surprising. It would be strange if contestants from the same areas weren't separated.

The first phase of the qualification process would be held within fifty separate grounds all over Japan, so it wasn't like there was a lack of choice.

Three more people got inside the bus before it started moving. It was still not full, which made Izuku realize the real reason why the directions he had been given included a specific time window. It was because the bus would be stopped at that place only during that time.

The trip continued, with the bus stopping in certain places for twenty minutes and picking up more candidates. The bus started filling up fast, and before long someone else ended up sitting besides Izuku.

It was a short girl with an appearance somewhat reminiscent of a frog. She had long dark hair and wide eyes with pure black irises. Her mouth was wide and her hands were large.

"My name is Tsuyu Asui. I'm from the Aichi Prefecture." She introduced herself.

"My name is Izuku Midoriya. I'm from the Shizuoka Prefecture." He said.

Izuku wasn't really used to speaking with others, particularly girls, but that didn't seem to matter to Tsuyu, who easily got him involved in a light conversation about school, friends and their respective quirks. In regards to the latter...

"Your quirk is really cool." Izuku said honestly.

Tsuyu's frog form gave her enhanced physical abilities, a powerful and mobile long tongue, as well as a bunch of smaller things. It was not an overly flashy power, but it was well-rounded, easy to use and had quite a few obvious paths for growth.

"You quirk is also pretty cool, though I don't understand how half of those things you talked about have anything to do with vibration." Tsuyu said.

"To be honest, neither do I, but vibration is how I understand it, so... I guess it works?" Izuku half-lied.

He was happy to have someone like Tsuyu to talk to during the trip to the place of the first test. He managed to mostly forget his worries and was able to relax. And eventually, the bus reached its final stop.

When Izuku got out from the transport, he was incredibly surprised. They had somehow gone underground, and the place they were at actually contained an entire city block (probably a replica created for the test).

The group followed a series of signs and finally congregated in a specially demarcated area, just a little bit inside the city. Izuku looked around and saw that there were other groups in different places, and presumably quite a few that he couldn't see.

"Looks like there's going to be as lot of people on this test, ribbit." Tsuyu said.

"Yeah, and it makes sense, considering how big this place is." Izuku agreed.

He was thinking about what kind of test it could be, when the answer came in the form of a computerized voice that came from hidden speakers across the entire city block.

"Attention, contestants. The countdown to the beginning of the test will start in a minute. Before that, I shall explain what you shall be doing in this test." The voice stopped for a moment "This city block is the testing field. Inside you will find different situations which will force you to exercise your heroic abilities and judgment.

"Situations such as robotic 'villains' causing havoc and plastic 'civilians' in dangerous places. You will earn points based on how you deal with those and other, more complex, situations. Those that reach a certain number of points within fifteen minutes will be qualified for the next phase of tests.

"One thing to keep in mind. While it is essentially impossible for all, or even most of you to obtain enough points to get through this initial phase, it is very possible for none of you to reach this standard. Keep this in mind: Only the best will be allowed to proceed forward."

With that, the voice went silent, and soon after, it was replaced by a countdown starting from twenty.

'So that's how it is...' Izuku thought, and then he had an idea and turned to talk to Tsuyu:

"Do you want to team up for this?" He asked.

"Hm?" She turned to him.

"Well, it's fine if you don't want to!" He said hastily, freaking out slightly.

"No, I think that's a good idea too." Tsuyu's face didn't show any expression, but her voice seemed amused "How do you think we should start?"

"Going up." Izuku said.

Tsuyu nodded, understand the intention of getting a view from above. The countdown kept going, and as soon as it hit zero, Tsuyu leaped towards one of the nearby buildings. At the same time, Izuku pointed a hand at the top of said building and shot upwards.

That particular maneuver was actually something he had his mother to thank for. He had gotten interested in her quirk when he noticed one time where she used it to grab a bottle of ketchup without even looking at it. His mom had explained by saying that she could more or less sense the surrounding environment, though mostly because it was her house and she understood it.

Takeshi had said that sensorial abilities were one of the most essential tools he should try to develop, so Izuku started to investigate how Inko's quirk worked. And soon he noticed that this sensorial part wasn't the only interesting part of that ability.

Essentially, "pull small objects" was something of a misnomer. Inko's quirk should be classified as "pull objects based on mass difference between it and the user". It had a lot in common with gravity, since it was based on respective masses.

However, it also had some characteristics of magnetism, because Inko could use it on objects that had a bigger mass than her, but the result would be that she was the one who would be "pulled" in the direction of the object.

Of course, even pulling objects whose mass exceeded one thirtieth of hers already caused a big burden on her body, which was why Inko had never noticed the real way her quirk worked. However, this quirk could be developed in that direction, such as learning to reduce the burden to be able to pull bigger masses, as well as the trick Izuku was currently doing: By distributing the force of the pull throughout his entire body, instead of just through his arm, he was able to pull himself towards things as a way to get around quickly.

Of course, he had almost broken his arm while he was learning to do that, but it was worth it.

Izuku zoomed upwards, and he was only slightly slower than Tsuyu, who had leaped at the wall of the building and then jumped upwards the rest of the way. Izuku also focused to try and sense the general state of the surrounding environment (he hadn't managed to truly hone the sensory capabilities of the skill to a decent level, but it was still something).

And with that, he was able to feel when all hell broke loose. The previously quiet buildings and streets became a sudden pandemonium.

Izuku could not get any details from the skill, but it wasn't entirely needed, as he could see a lot just from using his eyes. Robots had crawled out of the "sewers", exploded out from buildings or dropped down from the air. Fires broke out, buildings had partial collapses and a flood started. And the "civilians', red and white plastic models were teleported in, some appeared hanging from buildings, others on rooftops and others on the streets or inside buildings, and they were all somehow in danger.

He looked at Tsuyu, who had noticed it too. She looked at him for a moment and spoke three words:

"Left side first."

He nodded. The city block for the test consisted of three streets and the accompanying buildings. The left street was closest to the building they were on top of, so it would make sense to start from it.

Both of them jumped from the building. Tsuyu dove close to the wall and stopped herself a bit below the third floor mark. Just beside her was one of the hanging civilians, whom she put on her back before jumping towards the ground.

Izuku took a different approach. He used his "pull" power to "grab" onto the top of a nearby building and "swung" forward. His target was a robot that was rushing down the street in the direction of a trio of civilians.

Using a "shove", he neutralized the rest of the impact of landing and then sent an explosion straight at one of the legs of the robot (it was a biped). He targeted one of the joints, and the shock wave did exactly what it was supposed to do, breaking off the leg and causing the robot to topple to the ground. He sent another shock wave at the "head", managing to make the thing stop moving completely.

Then Izuku turned around and looked at the civilians. For a moment he thought of "rescuing" them, but he remembered that some of the models were lying on the ground, while those were upright, and so probably represented people who could move.

"Go to a safe place!" He shouted at them.

He felt pretty silly doing it, but it was important to show his train of thought, since the exam was being recorded.

At that moment, he saw Tsuyu leaping over him and into a nearby building with a floor on fire. She jumped back out of the building a few seconds later, carrying three civilian models, and landed right next to Izuku. He had an idea:

"Throw them there!" He pointed to a place outside the city block, presumably safe.

She hesitated for a moment, but decided to trust Izuku. She threw the plastic models into the distance, and he used the last of the major skills he had developed during the training period: The Air Cushion.

It was something he had originally developed as a defensive ability, based on the quirk of one of his classmates that allowed him to manipulate the air into a colorful cushion. He could only create it at touch-range, and the cushion he was capable of making was small, but Izuku managed to develop the main part of the ability (the color part was apparently based on particles), to the point where he could make a big cushion even far away from him.

And of course, if he needed a defense, he could make the close range cushion a lot thicker and more protective, but just for softening a landing, that would not be necessary.

Tsuyu nodded at him, and the two jumped into action again. The next few minutes were a blur as the duo teamed up to try and get the highest number of points possible. They rescued civilians from various places, destroyed robots of different designs and weapons, and tried to take note of the other candidates, who were showing off their own quirks as trying to get points as well.

And it was because of this last thing that Izuku noticed something. It was some kind of shadow tendril that extended from the inside of a building and hit a nearby participant in the head, knocking him out, before dragging him inside.

He made a gesture to get Tsuyu to notice him, and then spoke:

"There's something there." He pointed.

She looked like she was going to ask what it was, but then it happened again.

Her voice became serious "Looks like one of our competitors decided to try and sabotage the other participants."

"What?" Izuku could barely believe what he was hearing.

"Maybe we should..." She started talking, but then stopped suddenly, it seemed like she was thinking of something "Now I understand..."

"What?" Izuku asked.

"Saving people and defeating robots helps, but what if the examiners are looking for something else? What if we need to look for the source of the problems? A lot of the robots came from the underground, so maybe it is there." She deduced.

Izuku thought that it sounded likely "There's probably not just one 'source'. There's probably a few of them spread around." He added "But what about that one?" He pointed at the building.

"We should have enough time to deal with that before going." Tsuyu concluded.

Decision made, the two acted fast, since the test was timed. They got down from the building they were in and Izuku ran across the street, right next to the building of the enemy. He was focusing on his positional sense as he did so, and that was a good thing, because the black tendril was ridiculously silent and surprisingly fast. Izuku was barely able to put up a cushion shield in order to block it.

He immediately counter-attacked with a short-range shock wave upwards into the tendril, but it seemed to be unaffected. However, it did the job of attracting the attention of the owner, who retracted the tendril slightly in order to attack again.

But Izuku wasn't alone. Tsuyu had positioned herself in a blind spot before leaping straight into the building with great speed. Izuku saw from the tendril movement that the enemy had been startled, and tried to do a swipe at Tsuyu, but she did something and the tendril fell to the ground.

Izuku got in, and saw that the enemy had been a black haired girl. The black tendril was formed from her hair, abnormally compressed and threaded together. Tsuyu had apparently knocked the girl unconscious.

"Too bad." He said, looking at her "She would probably have a chance if she did the exam properly..."

"Yep, ribbit." Tsuyu agreed "But it's too late now."

They saw that there were eight unconscious participants lying down to the side. While Izuku felt pity for them, he also knew that they were probably going to fail.

Looking around, Tsuyu saw that there was a hole leading to the underground in a nearby room. Both she and Izuku went down it, and he was surprised to see that the sewer, while not exactly bright, definitely had enough illumination for them to be able to see their way around.

They walked together, quickly but carefully, trying to prepare themselves for anything that might happen.

However, it ended up not being necessary. They soon found a big and strange machine that was connected to the walls of the underground and apparently pushing some strange dark liquid into them. They didn't know exactly what it was, but it definitely wasn't good.

Still, one kick from Tsuyu and two fast shock waves by Izuku later, the machine was destroyed. The two ran out, hoping to go into another hole to see if there was more of those machines. However, before they could, the end of the test was announced.

+0+

Soon after that, in the control room, a question was asked:

"So, how many of the kids managed to pass the test?" The speaker was a middle aged woman with purple eyes and hair.

"Apparently, there were twenty-one." A male technician said in tones of surprise.

"Oh? That's double the usual amount. Looks like there are a lot of promising kids on this batch." The woman said.

A report was soon made. The contents of it were simple: Testing Location Number 17. Test Ended. 514 Participants. 21 Passing.

That was only the first test. The passing students would still have to do a lot more in order to be accepted at the International Hero School.