Midoriya was bouncing eagerly on his feet with a huge grin on his face, when Bakugou finally arrived at the beach. It had been some time since the green-haired boy was this enthusiastic.
It was enough to make the blonde raised a brow, looking rather skeptical, but the twitch to his lips betrayed his amusement. "So, you've finally got the 'perfect' quirk for the exams, huh?"
"Yup!" Izuku answered, popping the 'p' as he pumped a fist up in the air. "Even better than Hurricane Breath too!" He added with a confident waggle of his brows.
"Hmph, we'll see about that." Bakugou scoffed, before he slipped into a wild grin. That was the only warning before he charged forward, sending explosive blasts from his hands right at Midoriya.
Izuku avoided them easily-by sending out large gusts of wind from his hands that dissipated Kacchan's blasts and sent him flying high into the sky.
The blonde dug his heels into the ground to avoid being sent flying too, as he noted, looking begrudgingly impressed, "A wind quirk again, huh? This time, from just anywhere, too."
"Something like that~!" Midoriya shouted, just as he landed with a flying kick, right towards Bakugou's raised arms.
Despite being momentarily knocked back from the extra force, he managed to avoid tumbling to the ground himself though, with a quick blast of his explosive hands. Making them stronger, he used the momentum to charge right at the green-haired boy, who remained standing where he was, calmly smiling.
Before Bakugou could question this reaction, he was slipping on the sand, which had suddenly raised up from the ground in a large clump. He tumbled down, his explosive hands sputtering out in the process. "The fuck—-?!"
He looked up just in time to get a face full of water. On top of making look like a bedraggled angry cat given a bath, the sudden torrent quickly put out the remaining sparks in his palms too. A furious growl escaped his lips, as he quickly tried to light his hands up again, but failed due to the remaining moisture still on it.
"What the fuck, Deku?!" He screamed accusingly, quickly realizing this was all the other boy's fault, likely due to his quirk
"I told you it was even better than Hurricane Breath." Midoriya grinned, completely unrepentant, before he lit up his own hands, fire bursting from his palms, which he sent straight at Bakugou.
The blonde charged at him, ducking under the flames, and aimed a punch right at his torso. Or where it should've been, anyway. Midoriya had once again leapt into the air with a burst of wind that sent an already imbalanced Bakugou flying to the ground.
-o-
Needless to say, it was totally Midoriya's win today.
Bakugou had been angry, but not for too long, because not even he could keep up his anger in the face of the sheer awesomeness of his new quirk. Midoriya's enthusiasm may have been just the tiniest bit infectious too.
Or maybe it was just the possibility of him being able to get some revenge in the ensuing experiments to test the limits of his newest quirk.
Whatever the case, the two of them spent the rest of the day quite happily wrecking the newly cleaned beach together with a mixture of both their very powerful and destructive quirks.
-o-
Yeah, so it turned out, the quirk he changed into was all but perfect, basically.
-o-
Midoriya wasn't sure whether this proved or disproved his theory, considering the circumstances, and too add to the coincidence—or fate, or whatever it was—it was an elemental quirk again.
This wasn't technically that unusual, since they were fairly common, and over the years, he'd managed to change into some variation of an elemental quirk many, many times. Though they were usually much weaker and limited than Hurricane Breath, or, especially, his current quirk—Elemental Cycle.
Out of the many similar quirks he'd changed to, this was possibly the most powerful, even if only thanks to its inherent versatility, since he could generate and manipulate four different elements, instead of only the typical single one.
The only catch, as implied by the name, was that he could only use each element in a very specific cycle. He had to use air, then earth, then water then fire, before going back to air, then earth, and so one. Skipping a single one was not possible. Neither was repeating one.
It was quite a strict and strange limitation, but then, every quirk had at least one.
-o-
His true quirk, Quirk Change, had the limitation of him being unable to choose what he could change his quirk to, after all.
Supposedly, anyway.
Midoriya still had his theories about that, but it was put on the back burner for now. He had Elemental Cycle, and an entrance exam to work on, still.
-o-
If he thought about it more, Midoriya wasn't sure he liked how quickly he forgot his own revelations on the hidden power of all quicks when he was faced with a quirk that was so perfectly suited for flashy heroics.
But it was hard to care too much about those things in the face of his giddy childish excitement. Not to mention, this certainly solved pretty much all his problems with the entrance exams.
There was no way he'd fail with Elemental Cycle as his quirk, after all.
-o-
February 28th. The day of the entrance exams finally arrived.
Thanks to his current quirk, Midoriya felt more eager than nervous as he and Bakugou both made their way towards the UA campus.
Since he'd only had it for basically a week, he hadn't really gotten to test it out as much as he'd wanted, unfortunately, but it was enough for him to get a decent handle on it. The fact that he'd had a lot of experience with similar elemental-type quirks in the past helped a lot.
Though the specific details were slightly different, the general concept was usually the same across all of them. By applying everything he'd learned from various other air, earth, water and quirks he'd had before, he could manage to use Elemental Cycle with surprising amount of mastery despite the short time he'd actually had it.
"I can't believe we're really here," Midoriya couldn't help but note, as he briefly stared up in awe at the famous building they were so close to. "Can you believe that we'll actually be entering the halls where so many pro heroes once walked through too?"
"Yeah, soon we'll be one of them," Bakugou replied confidently before rolling his eyes. "Now, stop fucking staring at it like a loser and get inside! We'll be walking inside this fucking place every damned day soon enough."
"Wow, Kacchan, you could at least pretend to be a little nervous about the exams," Midoriya said teasingly.
"Why the fuck would I be nervous?" The blonde merely scoffed. "There's no way I'm fucking failing!"
Midoriya shrugged, unable to deny the point. Well, he probably could. But then the blonde would try to start a fight right there and they didn't want to be late for the exam.
"So, you better not fucking fail either, Deku!"
Coming from him, they were the sweetest words of encouragement he could probably expect. Grinning, he replied. "Love you too, Kacchan."
"Ugh, fuck you, Deku! I hope you fucking fail."
-o-
They didn't have much more time to talk to each other, after that. Once they were all ushered into the auditorium, where Present Mic, the Voice Hero, began to explain the rules of the practical portion of their exam.
"Woah, I can't believe Present Mic is the one hosting this!" Midoriya whispered to Kacchan eagerly. "I listen to his radio show all the time! How does he find the time to keep that up, be a pro hero and a teacher here at UA too?"
Well used to his fanboy antics around heroes, Bakugou only rolled his eyes, "Focus on the fucking exam, not your fanboying, dumbass."
"Oh, right," Midoriya cut himself off mid-ramble with that realization. As cool as it was to have a real live pro hero doing the intro, he should probably be focusing on the actual intro if he wanted to do his best here.
Present Mic was explaining all about the different points they could get depending on whatever faux-villain they fought. A student immediately raised his hand to ask a question. But he didn't wait for an answer, as he quickly shifted focus by suddenly turning around and loudly announcing, "—-and you two in the back! You've been chatting to each other the whole time. It's distracting!"
Midoriya blinked, a finger pointed towards himself in question, before shrugging. "Uh, sorry, I guess?"
He hadn't been aware he was quite that loud, since he'd mostly just been whispering to Kacchan. Then again, this kid did seem like the type who'd have thought even the softest of noises was too loud for him.
"Fuck off, glasses!" Bakugou shot back, rude as ever and completely unrepentant. "Who the fuck was even talking to you?"
"...maybe we should just get back to rules of the exam," Midoriya suggested, staring straight at Present Mic, as the boy with glasses straightened up, looking quite ready to delivery a strongly worded scolding to Kacchan's rude reply.
"The curly-haired boy is right! And nice catch! The fourth variety is worth zero points! Consider him more of an obstacle to be avoided!" Present Mic cut in.
"Thank you, sir! I apologize for the interruption!" The boy with the glasses said, as he sat down.
Bakugou didn't bother to say anything other than scoff, while Midoriya gave a slightly sheepish smile, before leaning forward to better listen to the rest of the explanation.
There wasn't much more left though, and soon, they were all being shuttled off into their different groups, as Present Mic shouted the school's motto behind them.
"Good luck, Kacchan!" Midoriya called out, just before they separated. Being from the same middle school, they were obviously sorted into different groups
"Yeah, yeah. See you later!" He raised his hand up in parting, before turning away.
-o-
The testing grounds were huge. It was essentially a mini city, and Midoriya could only stare out in amazement. Definitely a step up from training at Dagobah beach, he thought.
Everyone was clearly feeling pumped too. The overall mood was tense with excitement and eagerness, as they all got ready to do their best. In the midst of it all, Midoriya almost felt strangely calm. He could do this, he thought. Kacchan would never forgive him if he failed, after all. Really, he would never forgive himself either.
From the corner of his eye, he noted the boy with glasses was also in this group. His gaze narrowed into a close as soon as he noticed him looking. Clearly, he had not forgotten what had happened earlier. Briefly, Midoriya wondered if he ought to apologize for earlier, even if he didn't think he was really that much at fault. But now was hardly the time, after all.
Right now, they had a practical exam to do, as the voice suddenly booming in the air reminded everyone.
The test was starting now.
Once Present Mic made that point extremely clear, everyone rushed in as a group. Midoriya was unfortunate enough to be at the back of this pack.
But not for long.
With a gust of wind, he sent himself flying through the air, high above everyone else, only landing nimbly on the ground once he was quite some distance ahead of them.
So he was the first one to see the faux-villains they would be fighting. Or more specifically, the robots. Because their physical exam was them fighting huge fucking robots.
Plus Ultra! He thought giddily, as he broke out into a grin that would've rivalled Bakugou's in wildness.
Robots meant he had no need to hold back, after all.
A large column of earth sprung up from the ground, right through the core of the robot. That was three points already, according to Present Mic's diagram earlier.
-o-
"Woah, what's that kid's quirk?"
"Wasn't he the kid who was chatting during the intro?"
"Damn, I thought he'd be a wimp!"
"How the hell do I compete with that?!"
-o-
The exam was, if he was being completely honest, pretty easy. Thanks to Elemental Cycle, Midoriya was easily crushing robots and racking up points, left and right.
The hardest part was probably just finding enough robots to take down, since he was going through them so quickly.
But even this was easily remedied by simply flying high up enough to scout the surrounding area before he chose a target. In fact, from his vantage point up in the sky, he could easily snipe the robots with little risk, since they couldn't harm him from such a distance. The only trouble was since he had to switch elements every time he used them, he couldn't constantly keep himself in the air with his winds.
This was the most frustrating limitation of his quirk. The firm cycle order he had to keep to use any element meant he had to plan out his moves pretty well in advance. Though he could easily cheat it simply by quickly using one element in a frivolous way, such as briefly lighting up a tiny flame or creating a few droplets of water, so he could move onto the next one in the cycle.
In any case, there were plenty of options. The versatility of Element Cycle, even with its limitations, was what made it possible the perfect quirk to take the entrance exams with, and then some.
Using his winds for scouting and long distance sniping when he was up in the sky and then going for more close ranger fighting with his other elements, proved to be quite an effective combination against the robots.
-o-
"Six minutes left!"
Midoriya let go of the stream of fire from his hands, watching the half-melted robot break apart almost immediately after with a small satisfied smirk. Though he could've shot back into the air again to look for more robots, he allowed himself a moment to observe everyone else on the ground around him first.
"Twenty-eight points," One tired girl breathed out. She looked vaguely familiar, and he thought she might've been right next or near him and Kacchan when they'd first entered. Her quirk, from what he'd observed from the exam, was to make things either much, much lighter, or completely weightless. A quirk with a lot of potential, he thought.
"Forty-five points!" The boy with glasses who had scolded them earlier called out as he smashed a robot. Midoriya had glimpsed him running to and fro earlier, and the smoking engines on his legs made his quirk quite obvious.
He heard quite a few other people keeping track of their running scores, observing all the different quirks around him as they worked. For a quirk-obsessed guy like him, it was all incredibly fascinating. He itched to have his notebooks with him to record it all.
But, alas, as a robot drew close and waved a threatening arm at him, he reminded himself that he had to focus. Sending a large blast of wind in the robot's direction, it flew smack into a building, just in time for said building to morph and crush it.
"Sixty points," Midoriya called out his own running tally with a grin.
He wondered how Kacchan was doing. In all likelihood, the blonde was going berserk and destroying every robot in sight. Which one of them would get the higher score? He wondered.
Izuku wasn't exactly a super competitive person by nature, unlike his blonde friend, but the thought of Kacchan's reaction to him beating his score was more than enough motivation to keep him moving forward and searching for more robots. Sure, he probably had more than enough to pass now, but Plus Ultra, after all. He was getting a little tired, but he still had enough strength to rack up a few more points, he thought.
-o-
Just as Midoriya finished frying another robot for a sweet three points, it happened.
It being a truly gigantic robot that began rampaging through the mini city.
The zero-pointer obstacle, Midoriya quickly surmised. They really hadn't been kidding about the school motto being going above and beyond things.
Unsurprisingly, the sight of it had everyone running in the exact opposite direction. Even if it wasn't a gigantic robot that would probably crush everything in its footsteps, it was worth zero points after all. There was literally zero point in even trying to get close to it.
….unless it meant saving someone else from a robotic death, that is.
With wide eyes, Midoriya realized the girl with the weight-affecting quirk was trapped underneath some rubble and unable to run away like everyone else. She was also right on the path of the zero-pointer.
Without another thought, he moved. Thankful that he hadn't yet used his wind, he was able to quickly send himself hurtling through the air, sending huge gusts of winds everywhere that broke the glass and concrete of the buildings he passed. Midoriya hardly cared though, as he focused on getting to the girl as quickly as possible.
He was going so fast he nearly overshot himself, and only just managed to stop by sending another blast of wind forward. This had the added bonus of sending the gigantic robot momentarily stumbling back. It wasn't only for a short time, unfortunately, but that was all he needed.
Using his earth manipulation, Midoriya was easily able to lift the rubble off her while his hands worked on physically pulling her out underneath. Once she was free, he quickly doused the both of them in some water. The girl sputtered slightly at the sudden cold.
There was no time for apologies or explanations though. The water washed off some off the dirt on them both, and worked as minor protection for his next action, which was to send a huge blast of fire in the direction of the robot.
This had more of an effect on the robot, but it still wasn't quite enough.
-o-
"One minute remaining!"
-o-
Midoriya knew just what to do though. His past experience with Kacchan had taught him that.
With a smirk, he quickly sent blasts of air right into the inferno, which quickly magnified the existing fire by nearly tenfold. Then, he added all the stray rubble in the area into the equation too, trapping the robot firmly within the fiery blaze that was still growing in size.
If they didn't leave soon, they were going to be caught up in said blaze as well though, as the area close to them started erupting into flames too. Midoriya quickly sent a wave of water to douse the ones closest to them. At this point, the flames engulfing the robot were more than large enough this wouldn't affect it much.
Then, he before briefly lit up his hands just to use his fire, so he could move on. Literally too. Because if they didn't move it immediately, they were going to end up moving on from this plane of existence.
"Hold on tight," Midoriya told her, quickly grabbing her in a fireman's carry, before he sent the strongest blasts of wind he could to propel them in the opposite direction of the robot and the fire. This was, unfortunately, not as strong as he'd like, and despite his best efforts, they weren't flying fast or far enough yet.
He was breathing pretty hard by now, the strain of using so many powerful blasts in quick succession taking their toll, but he could hardly stop now. They still weren't quite far enough from the blast radius of what was promising to be an epic looking explosion.
Just as he got ready to push himself past his limits, however, he suddenly found his load had lightened quite significantly, and it was taking much less effort for him to fly with someone in his arms.
Not bothering to question this miracle for the moment, he quickly pulled the winds around them and propelled them both as fast as he could.
They managed to get away just in time.
-o-
BOOOOOMMMMMM!
-o-
In the observation room, where a multitude of screens were displaying live feeds from all over the grounds, the faculty and staff of UA were observing the prospective students, and similarly exploding with talk.
"Did he really just..?"
"The first time I've seen anyone take out a zero-pointer like that!"
"When was the last time anyone took out a zero-pointer at all?"
-o-
Midoriya and the girl in his arms tumbled to the ground in a rather less than gentle landing. His fine control over his winds was rather thoroughly shot after all the successive blasts at full power he'd just done, after all.
He thought about getting up, but decided against instead. He merely rolled over so he'd face his companion. Thoroughly wiped out, and rather bruised by his fall, he nonetheless remembered to ask, "Are you… alright?"
The girl groaned. There was a sort of green tint to her cheeks that made it look like she would throw up any moment now. After a few deep breaths, however, she managed to gasp out, "I'm f-fine. Just nauseous..."
Midoriya gave a tired laugh. "That's… good. Better than being burned to a crisp, right?"
Despite still looking quite sick, she gave him an answering smile and a shaky thumbs up.
-o-
"It's all over!"
-o-
Midoriya still hadn't bothered to stand up, despite the signal of the end of the exams, still feeling way too tired to do anything more than stare blankly at the sky above nim.
But when he saw a hand float into his vision, offering help, he could hardly refuse. Taking the proffered hand, he managed to slowly stand up as well, albeit on some very shaky legs. He almost immediately had to lean on the girl who'd held out her hand to him.
"Ah, sorry," he said, as he tried to properly get on his feet. But the girl quickly waved his attempts away.
"It's fine! It's the least I could do after you saved me. Thank you for that!" She grinned widely at him. Though there was still a slightly unwell look to her, she didn't seem like she was going to puke anymore. That was good. "I'm Ochako Urakara, by the way!"
Though he was feeling tired down to his bones at the moment, he felt himself perk up too. Her enthusiasm was infectious. "You're welcome. I'm Midoriya Izuku."
"Nice to meet you! Your quirk is incredible! I've seen elemental quirks before, but never four of them in one person!"
Midoriya gave a sheepish smile. He wondered if he should try to explain what his actual quirk was, before deciding he was a bit too tired for that incredibly long discussion right now. Besides, so long as he kept it, Elemental Cycle was effectively his quirk anyway, "Ah, yeah. I'm pretty lucky, thanks. Your quirk is really cool too!"
He would've said it no matter what Ochako's quirk was, of course, because he liked to believe every quirk was special in its own way, but now that he remembered what her quirk was, Midoriya's eyes widened in realization, the pieces quickly sliding into place. "You have a quirk that makes things weightless, right?"
"Ah, yeah, my quirk is Zero Gravity," she explained with a startled look. "I can remove gravity's effects on objects. How did you know?"
"I saw you using it on those robots earlier, and took a guess. I like to observe different quirks a lot so I was kinda paying attention to everyone earlier." Midoriya gave a slightly sheepish laugh, before turning more earnest, as he added, "And you used it on both of us, just now, so we could fly away faster. You basically saved us both too."
Ochako blushed. "Well, I realized I could help, so of course I had to do it."
Midoriya grinned, "Me too."
-o-
Recovery Girl herself walked onto the field and started healing everyone with injuries. There wasn't much she could do for Midoriya and Ochako though, who only had a few bruises and scrapes, but nothing too extreme. Their biggest problem was simply exhaustion from quirk overuse.
Indeed, Midoriya was so tired he could barely muster up a fraction of his usual fanboy enthusiasm at having Recovery Girl herself being the one treating everyone after the exam. After exhausting himself so thoroughly, he was ready to just flop onto the bed and sleep the rest of the day away.
Thankfully, once they were given the all clear medically, they were allowed to leave. Midoriya, Ochako, and many others, soon left the grounds. Everyone looked pretty banged up after the exams, even with Recovery Girl's help.
Just as they all started to separate, Ochako turned towards him, smiling. "Thanks again, for saving me. I really thought I was a goner for a moment there."
"It's no problem. Thanks for saving me, too. You know, our quirks make for a really good combination together." Midoriya replied, looking eager, as he went on. "We should try it again sometime and see how far we can go, you know, without a burning robot explosion to worry about."
Already, he was whirring with the different experiments they could try out. Maybe they could even add Kacchan to the mix? Though the blonde was probably a little too much like a burning robot explosion for comfort. Maybe not.
"Oh yeah, sure! That would be great," Ochako answered happily. "Why don't we exchange emails?"
-o-
They went their separate ways, once they left the main building.
As expected, Midoriya soon ran into Kacchan, who didn't quite wait for him exactly, but had clearly been walking slower than usual, because the green-haired boy had easily caught up to him despite taking the extra time to talk to Ochako after the test.
"Hey, Kacchan," he greeted with a smile, that while genuinely cheerful contained far less energy than he had this morning.
"Deku, you're actually talking like a normal fucking human now." Bakugou noted, with all his usual tact, raising a brow. "What the fuck happened in your exams?"
"Hmm.. that's a long story. Put simply, there was a truly epic explosion, the likes of which will probably be talked about for ages to come…" He began, gaining more of usual energy as he added all the proper drama to his telling (not that it needed much help, really).
Kacchan had been equal parts impressed, frustrated and disbelieving once he done.
"I can't fucking believe you." He shook his head, before quickly correcting himself, "No, wait, actually, I can definitely believe a dumbass Deku like you would do that."
Midoriya scoffed, "Psshh. You're just jealous that you didn't get to beat down a giant robot."
"More like you're jealous I was smart enough not to fucking bother with useless shit. You do remember the giant fucking robot was worth zero points, right?"
"...you do remember I was saving someone from the robot, right?" Midoriya pointed out, before shrugging. "Anyway, I have enough points."
"Not more than me, though." Kacchan replied, smirking.
Izuku only rolled his eyes, completely unsurprised this was the part that his friend was focusing on. "Yeah, yeah. Good for you."
He was only being slightly sarcastic too. 77 points, if the blonde's own count was to be believed, was quite an impressive total. Midoriya's own 63 points total fell rather short of it, though he personally thought his win against the zero-pointed should've added like another fifty points or something.
"I still managed to defeat a giant fucking robot though." Midoriya couldn't help but point out, making Bakugou roll his eyes this time.
"Whatever. I could've taken one out too, if I wanted to."
"Keep telling yourself that." He couldn't resist teasing.
Eyes narrowing angrily in response, he spat out, "Fuck you, Deku. Do you wanna eat a fucking explosion right now?" Despite the threat, he had yet to light up his hands. In all likelihood, despite his boasts, he was also way too exhausted from the exams to actually use his quirk in any significant way.
Maybe that was why Midoriya couldn't help but grin as he pushed the blonde's buttons further, "Yeah, you're my best friend and I care about you too, Kacchan."
Bakugou didn't manage to light up an explosion, even after that, but he was all too able send a punch normally anyway. Though he didn't do much more than that, and didn't even bother sending another one when Izuku ended up avoiding him easily. For Bakugou, that was all but the equivalent of a tearful bear hug.
-o-
The day of the entrance exams for UA was definitely one Midoriya was never going to forget.
(Nor would anyone else, because this was going to be quite a historic day, in more ways than one, and it would all be thanks to Midoriya.)
