"This isn't going like I hoped it would." Kaori thought to herself as she narrowly managed to dodge another attack from either Arata or one of his clones. "This was supposed to be a quick snatch and grab with them too caught up in finishing the test. Why did one of them have to be an overachiever and rush ahead?" Kaori fought the urge to slap the palm of her hand into her head as she was currently predisposed. "Damnit, how did I miss that?! The whole reason I thought of this literally RELIED on them wanting to scramble over each other."

"What the hell?" The boy's voice snapped Kaori's head around as she spun to attempt to deflect another of his surprise attacks. "Why's your shoulder already tagged?" The boy was so confused that he had actually stopped attacking Kaori and was simply standing there looking at her with a puzzled look.

Kaori wondered for a moment if it was possible for her to be even more confused than him even as she kept her ears peeled for sounds of another one of him approaching from the cloud they both stood in. "What are you talking about, you hit m-" Her eyes snapped wide with realization before finishing that thought as she realized something was suddenly very wrong with this scene.

Barely a minute or two earlier, she and Mina had been eavesdropping on the trio trying to figure out what to do next. And she had completely forgotten one very important detail once the battle between them had started. Arata only needed one target to move through…

So where had the ball that hit her shoulder come from?! And how had it gotten her through the thick, black cloud that had obscured everything outside?!

"Shit!" The boy cursed before ducking away from Kaori's field of view and disappeared once again. His voice echoed through the abyss as Kaori waited, expecting another attack to come at her from any direction. "So much for playing around with you newbies, we've gotta finish this before we lose this chance! Ahmya! Drop the smoke! Someone else is sniping us through it and I need visibility back!"

"Oh, really?!" The girl, Ahmya, snapped back. "I didn't notice the balls sailing past me and this acid girl while you were busy playing around in there!"

Suddenly, a loud inhaling sound filled the air as the cloud thinned out and travelled back into the girl's mouth. Not that Kaori had very long to wonder what that must feel like, given how all three Arata's were now charging her at once, and in too close a proximity for her to create a large enough obstacle between them.

But that would have been a bigger issue months or even weeks ago BEFORE she had done a lot of trial and error with her Quirk over the summer. She was, surprisingly, very thankful for the trial-by-fire approach the school had taken with them despite everything that had happened that year. Without missing a beat, Kaori's eyes burst into their telltale purple hue as her forearms both began to do the same.

"Nice try!" The Arata on the right said. "But you'll never get one of your objects in play soon enough to stop us!"

"We're already too close for you to stop us!" The one on the left gloated with a smirk. Kaori could only allow a smirk of her own to fill her face as the glow on her arms snapped out of existence.

"Made you look."

In the seconds that followed, a loud howl of pain filled the air as Kaori swung her left leg up – now aglow from her Quirk as she quickly switched what she was replicating – and a projection of her foot SLAMMED into the centre of Arata's groin with a sickening crack. The other two Arata's winced with the same pained expression as the first before being pulled back into the boy's body as he crumpled to the ground holding himself.

Kaori whipped her head over to where she roughly remembered the smoke girl standing, hoping that Mina was still in the fight or even finished her own. Unfortunately, at that moment Ahmya breathed a small puff of black smoke into Mina's face, blinding her as Ahmya caught her in the abdomen with a powerful spin-kick. Her friend tumbled across the dirt with the wind knocked out of her even as the other slowly turned to face her with a passing glance to her teammate.

"Went for the weak point, huh?" The girl winced ever so slightly as Arata curled into himself a little more, almost protectively. "Oh well, doesn't really matter when I take out one of your targets and move on. After all, I have the advan-" Her sentence was never able to finish as Kaori lashed out with her Quirk and grappled onto the girl's neck with a grip strong enough to prevent her from breathing heavily, but not enough to entirely choke her out.

"No more smoke clouds, if you don't mind." Kaori said before turning her attention to her classmate out of the corner of her vision. "You alright, Mina?"

"Yeah, all good. Just a little tender in the stomach from that kick. Man am I glad I went with a light breakfast this morning or that would NOT have ended well."

"Thinking about food now of all times? Weird sense of priorities don't you think?" The sight and sound of a body slowly moving on the ground in front of her caught her attention as she fought to keep her eyes ahead as much as possible. "You mind doing me a favour and slapping one of your balls on this guy here before he gets up and outs me?" A groan left her mouth at the look Mina gave her. "Oh, just get with it."

Mina looked past her as her eyes widened, her hand quickly reaching for a ball hanging from her belt before sprinting over. A quick application of the ball on the boy's remaining target as he started to move had its light fade out, signaling his removal from the exam. She then turned back to Kaori as she stood back up straight. "Sorry I couldn't help more, she put up more of a fight than I expected with her Quirk."

"Well, I put a stop to that so let's finish getting these targets and hope we can find two more before the 100 spots fill up and we have to explain to Mr. Aizawa how we failed." As she finished, Kaori continued to hold onto Ahmya to prevent her from breathing out her Quirk or getting away while walking towards her and placing one of her balls on the girl's only remaining target as well. She then let her Quirk go as the girl stumbled to catch her footing and breath while giving her a dirty look. "Now to grab the two that the girl who got stuck has."

As the two Class A students turned to face the girl they had managed to capture, both of them gained a bothered expression as well as a moment of hesitation. As it turned out, the way the girl had gotten stuck to Mina's adhesive slime left her two remaining targets completely exposed. Unfortunately, the girl's choice of placement was…interesting. As she had decided to place them directly on her butt cheeks.

"I…just…why?!" Kaori raked her fingers through her hair with an exasperated look even as she and Mina slowly approached the trapped student.

"For the exact reason that you two are reacting right now, duh!" The girl, Akane, stated with a proud tone. "A single moment's hesitation is all you need to secure the win and the moment someone pauses seeing where my targets are is when I get an advantage and can take them by surprise. Pretty ingenious, huh?"

"Yeah…except for when something like this happens and you end up coming across like some giant perv." Mina commented without her usual cheerfulness. This whole situation was just…messed up. "How are we even supposed to do this? Toru wouldn't care given how touchy she is, but even I feel like this is crossing a line."

"Just…put it on and let's get out of here so that we can forget about it. I just want to get past this test already." Kaori shuddered as she pulled out another of the rubber balls they had been given for the exam.

"Sounds fine to me…but I'm holding you responsible if this scars me."

"Don't worry; I'm pretty sure I'll be right there with you."

Unfortunately, this would prove true as a strong moan would escape the girl the moment the two of them placed the balls on her targets to eliminate her. Something told Kaori that they might have just found the next generation of their teacher Midnight in that exam…and she prayed that she would one day be able to forget about it entirely.

Thankfully they would at least receive a brief distraction in the form of a large beam of light lancing up into the skies above.

"Kaori, that's Aoyama's Quirk! And it's note far from here!"

"Well hopefully anybody else that's left recognizes it because that's probably our only chance to regroup!"

A short sprint later, Kaori and Mina were reunited with various members of Class A as everyone allowed their Quirks to run wild, eliminating opponent after opponent in the barrage of abilities that got thrown around after Kota's distraction with a large flock of pigeons.

"Body Barrage!"

All of Kaori's extremities seemed to glow at once with how quickly she switched from launching a fist or a foot at a further off enemy and coating herself in larger limbs to deliver knockout blows to examinees in her immediate reach. After a chaotic series of attacks delivered by her and those of her classmates, everyone was able to finish collecting targets and move onto the next stage of the exam. By the end of it, Kaori could feel a slight twinge in the back of her mind from the sheer amount of rapid use of her Quirk she had just gone through. The time they had spent both in the camp with the Pussycats as well as her being assaulted by so many Ectoplasms in days past really had helped in how much of a strain her Quirk put on her. She could already tell that her limit was much higher than it used to be, and she hoped it would be a long time before it ever got pushed so hard again. But a part of her knew that it was wishful to think that, especially given how their lives had been since going to Yuuei.

"Hey Kaori, you doing alright there?" Mina's voice caught her attention as they all slowly marched towards the place that all of the other students to finish the first stage had gone.

"Yeah, I'm good. Just surprised how much that training over the summer has helped." Kaori commented while looking down at her open hands. "I knew going to Yuuei would be tough and that it would help us improve, but I never expected it to be this noticeable this quickly. The things I can do with my Quirk now…they're things that I could only dream about as a kid. It's…incredible." A slight burning sensation filled Kaori's chest as she ran an arm across her eyes quickly to prevent any tears from showing. But when she pulled her arm away it was completely dry. It was then that she realized that the warm feeling wasn't a sign of tears.

It was a sign of pride. Even though they had hardly finished the exam and gotten any indication of whether or not they would even get licenses, Kaori felt on top of the world in that moment as she realized how much she had grown in the last year. It still hurt to think back on the day her father died and the years of fear and anguish she had felt following that night, but she was one step closer to the light she had been reaching for since she was young.

Now she just had to keep moving forward.

Due to the short amount of time between the end of the first test and the start of the second, Kaori knew that there wasn't a lot of time to prepare for the rescue operations they were about to undertake. When the testing area had been blasted into bits and reduced to various states of rubble and debris, she had felt that familiar sense of dread that she had felt both as a child and in Kamino the night they had gone to rescue Bakugou. What was different this time was the fact that once she felt it she had leapt on it in an attempt to grapple it into submission before it paralyzed her and left her useless like it had each time prior. If she was going to prove anything at this point, both for the sake of the test but also to herself, she needed to be able to act past the fear of her own accord. Each time prior she had either been too young to do anything anyways, or had someone else snap her attention back so that she could focus at the current situation better. Given that her own Quirk was so directly tied to her focus that was a battle she couldn't afford to lose so easily to anymore.

And so it was that once the walls collapsed around them to signal the start of the exercise, Kaori was one of the first ones sprinting into the field to determine what was going on. It became quickly apparent that with how much ground to cover they were lacking on better intel as to the general state of things. What they needed more than anything was recon to get a better scope of things. And there was only one other person Kaori knew of off-hand that could assist in such a thing. Kaori glanced around attempting to find the one person she knew that was best suited to help, eventually finding them standing with a few of her other classmates as they looked for some way to help.

"Shoji!" Kaori yelled to the multi-talented member of their class. "I need your help with something!"

As soon as he heard his name called, the masked boy swiveled his head around to where the sound came from and immediately started moving quickly in her direction. As he neared, his deep voice came out from behind his trademark piece of clothing.

"What do you need help with, Kaori?" The boy asked with a curious tone. "I would have imagined you would already be aiding in moving larger pieces of debris with your Quirk."

"I will in a bit, but what we need right now is intel. Without a birds-eye view we don't have the best idea of where people might be short of walking around every piece of rubble blocking our view. So I'm going to use my Quirk to get you more easily up to a higher vantage point to call out people's locations."

"Sounds like a plan." Shoji then gestured with one of his arms towards a relatively undamaged structure not too far from their current location that had a decent height to it. "That structure there seems like the best option immediately available to us. Just let me know when you're ready to lift me up."

After helping Shoji up to the structure he had instructed on, he had immediately noticed a pair of trapped H.U.C. members poking out from a scattered pile of rubble that no one else was currently close to. A quick nod of thanks and Kaori had sprinted off in the direction he had pointed, taking deep breaths as she went to keep herself in the zone. Every moment she could feel that squirmy feeling that disaster sites always gave her, but as soon as she saw a hand poking above some broken concrete everything seemed to fade away as she honed in on the body part she could see. As she crested a pile of rubble, she saw an older man kneeing next to a young boy that had what looked like blood coming from the top of his head. The two of them were both in the middle of a sizeable clearing, which made Kaori breathe a sigh of relief as it meant she wouldn't have to worry about loose debris falling anywhere near them. The older man looked bruised as well, but noticeably in better shape than the boy.

"Sir! Are you injured at all?" Kaori called out from the pile as she slowly made her way down and closer to the two bodies. If there was one thing that was helping her right now with her past experiences of disaster zones coming back to her mind, it was the sight of a Hero checking to see if her and her mother were alright when they had been discovered after her father had died. "What about the boy?"

"My left arm hurts to move, but I'm otherwise okay! But this child seems to be badly hurt on the head and won't wake up no matter what I try! He was all alone and I don't know if his parents happen to be nearby!"

"Man, they are seriously into this routine." Kaori thought to herself as she reached the bottom of the pile. "But if his arm hurts then he can still walk. I just need to pick up the boy and then I can get the two of them out of he-" Once she was about thirty feet away from the two of them, her body stumbled as a portion of the ground she walked on shifted underneath her. What she hadn't expected to follow that was the harsh voice that suddenly came from the boy's body.

"You idiot! Shouldn't something have tipped you off that something was wrong if an old man that can walk wasn't moving from where he currently was? If you had just taken a quick glance around rather than walking straight towards the first thing you saw, you would have noticed the sign for an underground subway literally just off to your left!" Kaori cursed under her breath as she glanced in said direction and noticed the sign, plain as day. "Large chunks of the ground here are unstable and can't handle any weight on them from all of the damage. Use your head next time!"

"Damnit, he's right." Kaori berated herself as she glanced around in case anything else was off. "I'm supposed to be one of the more focused members of our class and here I am making a complete fool of myself by not doing what I'm normally good at. "I'm glad at least that Nozomi can't see this…she would have given me an earful for not watching better after the week I had with her."

"In that case, I'm going to need the two of you to remain completely still, okay? I'll get the two of you out of there as soon as I can!" As she finished speaking, Kaori focused her Quirk to create two platforms around the size of a large sidewalk block on both sides of the two civilians. With a deep breath, she carefully moved on of her hands so that one of the projections was gently resting right next to the boy.

"Sir, I'm going to need you to help me with this using your good arm. I can't tell from here what state his head injury is, so I need you to VERY GENTLY lift his head up enough for me to slide my hand under him. Can you do that for me?"

"I think I can manage. But what are you going to do after that?"

"Once he's safe, I'll have you step on to the other hand there and I'll lift both of you away from there so that the both of you can be brought somewhere safer to treat your injuries better. Does that sound alright to you?"

The old man nodded as he leaned over the boy and gently placed a hand under his head before tilting it up slightly. "Like this?"

"Perfect."

After a somewhat tense series of moments where Kaori gently lifted the two of them away from the unstable area, she was once again approaching the building Shoji was stood atop of. Beside her the old man was moving at a good pace, while on her other side she continued to have one of her projections formed as she held the boy up completely flat to avoid disturbing his "head injury" in any way. As much as she had appreciated them telling her what she had done wrong, she really didn't need to be told off by a kid again.

"Shoji!" Kaori called out the boy's name again as she neared. "Where are they taking all of the civilians?!"

Shoji pointed back towards where the test had started just as he finished instructing another examinee as to the location of another H.U.C. member. "Over there! I just saw Midoriya carrying a young boy in that direction!" Just as Kaori began to move in said direction, Shoji's voice caught her attention as he spoke up once again. "Before you go, I would appreciate a quick assistance with descending the building and aiding in the rescue efforts more directly now that we've gotten a better scope of the area."

"Alright, just one moment." Kaori focused her free hand into a platform for Shoji to step onto before quickly lowering him to the ground where he gave a quick nod before sprinting off in another direction. Kaori then turned her attention back to the older H.U.C. member standing at her side patiently. "Okay, let's go."

As the three of them neared the staging area, Kaori was momentarily shocked at the sheer number of people already being treated by those that had stayed behind to use their Quirk's better suited for treated the injured than heading out into the disaster site.

That shock was quickly drowned out by a much greater surprise as a portion of the wall further away exploded open, revealing a large group of people wearing black bodysuits and led by a massive man that looked to be part-whale if Kaori had to take a guess.

"Guys! The scenario of the exercise, it's…" Midoriya's voice carried out from not far away from where Kaori stood frozen, thankfully with enough presence of mind to remain focused on her projection so that the boy didn't suddenly tumble to the ground. "Gang Orca!"

"Villains have appeared out of the woodworks to give chase!" The voice of the man in charge of the exam spoke over the loudspeakers. "All would-be heroes on the scene, kindly suppress the villains while at the same time continuing relief efforts."

"So this is it." Kaori thought as she felt that pit of dread swell just a little bit bigger inside of her. "This is the REAL test."

"HOW WILL YOU REACT!?" Gang Orca's deep voice echoed across the area. "OH HEROES!"

Kaori felt like a ball of lead had just fallen into her stomach as she tried to stay calm. Her eyes trained forwards, she silently carried the young boy towards the makeshift triage area before informing someone there of the injuries to the young boy and the old man. With a hesitant look in her eyes she turned in the direction of the large group of "Villains" that had appeared.

"Excuse me, young miss?" The voice of the older man caught Kaori off-guard as she turned to him with a confused look. "What's your name?"

"My name?" Kaori's voice was filled with confusion. "It's Kaori, why-"

"That's not what I meant, young lady." The man gave her a critical look. "What. Is your name?"

It took a few seconds before a look of realization crossed Kaori's eyes and she felt a renewed sense of determination fill her. A smile found it's was onto her face as she started to turn towards the large mass of attackers. "My name?"

"It's Annex."

Okay, so my priorities somehow got completely buggered in the last month, which resulted in a much longer break than I am proud of occurring to this stories updates. As a pseudo-apology, I made sure to take the time and effectively turn this into a roughly 2-chapter length portion to make up for lost time. There was no way I was releasing what I had at first after almost an entire month. So hopefully that at least partially makes up for my horrible procrastinating somehow swinging full-force there and keeping you guys in the dark. Next update should be (and will if I keep my head on straight) in roughly two weeks to keep us back on track.

Otherwise, I hope you've all enjoyed the ride thus far and are happy seeing more of Kaori's growth and underlying issues come more into play in this segment of the story.