* AN: This story stub has not been beta-read.

Disclaimer: I DO_NOT own "My Hero Academia" franchise. No profit is being made.

My Hero Academia :: Half Power, Full Heart

Little Izuku was a little over four and a half years old when he used his Quirk for the first time, somehow managing his favorite picture book about All Might from his bed-side table straight into his waiting hands. Suddenly being able to use telekinesis had startled him, but once he got over that shock, he couldn't be more happy: he finally had a Quirk of his own! And while it wasn't as overwhelmingly powerful as what his idol Hero wielded, it was still great!

His parents were very happy about this development as well. His father, who was in the middle of his six-months long business trip to Canada, even promised to take a few days off next week, at his own expense, to visit them.

Meanwhile, his mother tried to schedule an appointment with a doctor so that they could learn more about his Quirk. Unfortunately, none of the clinics within reasonable distance from their home had any time slots still open this week and the earliest a doctor could see Izuku was next Tuesday. But that was not a problem, right?

And while they were waiting for their appointment with the Quirk specialist, Izuku's mother couldn't help but share the happy news. Thus, the next afternoon the two Midoriyas were visiting with the Bakugos.

"I heard you finally got your Quirk, Izu-chan?" Katsuki said as two boys retreated into a pillow fort that sat in the corner of the living room. "About damn time, I say."

"Y-Yes I did get it, Kacchan." Izuku replied. "I can pull things to me, just like my mom." And to demonstrate it, he summoned a marker from the coffee table half-a-room away.

"That's pretty good." His friend said. "But not as great as my Explosion!" And to illustrate his point, Katsuki created a bunch of small explosions around his palms. Which might have not been the best of his ideas as their pillow fort immediately started filling up with smoke.

"What was that I heard just now, brat?" His mother immediately shouted. "How many times do I have to tell you - no making explosions in the house!"

"Yes, your explosions are really cool, Kacchan." Izuku agreed. "But my Quirk has to be cool as well. How can the two of us be the greatest Heroes otherwise?"

"Ha! Of course!" The explosive blonde agreed.

The two boys played throughout the afternoon without anything really noteworthy happening. Then again, they were mostly just imagining their lives as Japan's two best Heroes some twenty years into the future and various heroic deeds they will be performing on a daily basis. Izuku also did a few clumsy sketches for their heroic costumes. But since he wasn't a great artist by any stretch of imagination yet, those sketches were more like random doodles that only he himself could understand.

Izuku and Katsuki met again the next morning when they went to play in the local park. There, they were joined by Katsuki's two other friends, Souga, who could extend his fingers, and Tsubasa, whose Quirk granted him a pair of wings.

"Alright!" The wielder of Explosion called loudly as the four of them gathered on the edge of a the more overgrown and forest-like part of the park. "Katsuki's Agency, move out!" He commanded, before heading straight into the woods. Izuku, Souga and Tsubasa quickly followed him.

After a few minutes, they reached a small stream with a single log bridging its two banks. Katsuki had no trouble walking across this bridge, but Izuku wasn't as 'lucky' and slipped. He would've fallen into the stream too if his explosive friend hadn't caught him. And as he wrapped his hand around Kacchan's and made a five-point contact with it, Izuku suddenly felt a strange pricking sensation spread through his arms. He was too shaken by his near-fall to pay that much attention or even really notice it though.

"Careful there, sidekick." Katsuki said as he pulled Izuku back onto the log. "I can't have useless people in my agency. And you can't be useful if I have to save you all the time!"

"I promise I won't need to be saved again, Kacchan!" The green-haired boy replied.

"Are you two alright?" The explosive blonde asked Souga and Tsubasa then. And once they nodded, he commanded: "Onwards, then!"

Another few minutes of walking through near-forest, the four boys arrived at a clearing.

"Villains!" Katsuki called, nodding towards a pair of trees, broken by a recent storm. "You will not escape justice!" He then launched himself at his imaginary enemies, quickly reducing them to splinter with powerful blasts. "Ha ha ha! There is no way you could've matched the mighty Lord Explosion Murder!" He then looked around, before spotting a large pine cone - probably brought here by some creature - nearby. "And there is the hostage! Rescue him, Mighty Pull!"

Nodding, Izuku tried to use his telekinesis on the pine cone... And nothing happened. Not even a kick-back he experienced when he tried to pull something that was too heavy or too far away.

"What's the matter? Why aren't you rescuing the hostage?" Katsuki asked.

"I'm trying…" The green-haired boy breathed out as he was still futilely trying to make his Quirk work. But all that he managed to achieve was making his hands unusually sweaty.

"Trying? Just trying?" Kacchan asked angrily. "I can't have sidekicks that are useless. Do it right now if you want to still be a part of my great agency!" Nodding jerkily, Izuku did his best to activate his Quirk and bring the 'hostage' to 'safety'. Alas, his efforts were yielding absolutely no results. And after a minute or so, the young greenette got tired and accepted his defeat. Angry at his failure, he clenched his fists tightly and threw his hands to the sides.

And suddenly there was an explosion. One that wasn't created by Katsuki.

"Huh?" Izuku breathed out, deeply shocked by what had just happened.

"What the heck was that, Izuku?!" The explosive blond demanded angrily. "Why do you suddenly have my Quirk?!"

~/ *** \~

As it turned out, Izuku's Quirk was one that allowed him to copy the Quirks of other people. According to the doctor, it could copy only Emitter-type Quirks and only at half-power. And it activated when Izuku touched a person's skin with all five fingers of his either hand. How exactly the man was able to determine that was anyone's guess as Izuku retained the copy of Katsuki's Explosion no matter how many times the doctor had him try to copy another person's Quirk.

And speaking of copied Explosion, Izuku could still use it several days after obtaining it and it remained just as strong as it was back then. It looked like whichever Quirk he actually manages to copy will remain available to him until such time he gets another one. And seeing how Katsuki's Explosion was a pretty powerful Quirk, the doctor speculated that Izuku would need to copy an even more powerful - by whatever metric his copy-Quirk used to measure 'power' - Quirk to replace it. To no one's surprise, though, people weren't eagerly volunteering for that experiment, so it looked like Izuku was stuck with Explosion for a long time.

Once the properties and limits of his Quirk were determined as best as possible, the next step was getting it registered with the National Quirk Registry. And since it copied an Emitter-type Quirk at half of the original's power, the clerk who performed the registration named it 'Inferior Copy'.

Needless to say, Katsuki didn't take the news that Izuku could copy others' Quirks - and has copied his - well. How dare he steal his Explosion?! Their friendship was over right there and then, despite Izuku's best attempts to keep it alive. Not satisfied with just that, the explosive blond took to making his former friend's life miserable by calling him names, jostling him whenever teachers weren't looking and other dirty tricks. And since he was popular, strong and had a cool Quirk, none of the kids chose to stand by Izuku against him.

Of course, being not quite five years old, Katsuki wasn't as great at hiding things as he thought he was. Thus, it wasn't long before his mother learned that he was now bullying Izuku. And she wasn't happy about that. Not at all. Unfortunately for the Bakugo matriarch, her son was very stubborn and punishing him didn't change his behavior. Instead, it only made him bully Izuku more because, clearly, it was Izuku's fault that his mother was giving him these stupid, groundless punishments.

It looked like the only way to properly deal with this problem was to keep the two boys apart, at all times. And since Katsuki has already gained a rather large following at the pre-school, taking him elsewhere would probably only cause the other kinds to gang up on Izuku for it. Thus, it was Izuku, who ultimately had to change pre-schools. Mitsuki offered, several times, to pay the associated expenses, but Inko being Inko refused to even consider these offers.

Izuku's new pre-school was marginally nicer with no Katsuki and his squad to knock him around and call him names. But since the copy Quirks were commonly seen in a negative light with some people even claiming that they are universally 'villainous', once it became known that he had one, he got canceled. He wasn't barred from attending the classes or anything like that, of course, but the kids and the teachers alike did their best to pretend he didn't exist. And that certainly wasn't helping the greenette any.

By the time Izuku was six, he loathed his Quirk for all the bad things that had happened to him because of it and wished he had been born with a different one. He now wore gloves at all times to avoid accidentally copying someone's Quirk and making that person hate him. And he absolutely refused to use Explosion, only activating it for briefly every few weeks to see whether it was still there or not.

Perhaps as a way to fill the void left from rejecting his own Quirk, Izuku took to recording and analyzing the Quirks of others, be they his classmates, teachers, various Heroes and villains or just random interesting people on TV. That didn't really endear him to people, though, as his meticulous note-taking was seen as creepy and a further sign he was on a path to become a villain. But since Izuku hadn't done anything actually wrong, all they could do was continue canceling him.

~/ *** \~

Twelve years old Izuku wasn't really sure why he decided he wanted to visit the recently-opened Sky Egg tower. It wasn't like any event he had interest in was taking place there at the time. Perhaps he just wanted to spend some time away from Musutafu? Anyhow, his mother agreed to take him there and so, on a fine Saturday morning the two of them headed out to Tokyo.

When they arrived at the Sky Egg, it turned out that the tower was hosting a farewell party for Captain Celebrity. Izuku wasn't really a fan of the man. He was a very competent Hero with a powerful Quirk, sure, but his personality… Captain Celebrity was an attention-seeker and a show-off who cared a little bit too much about his image. Hell, the man even had a team of cheerleaders working for him, doing their cheerleader thing whenever he did something Heroic in front of the cameras.

That said, Captain Celebrity did get more properly-Heroic over the months he had spent in Japan, so he wasn't all that bad. But Izuku still couldn't call himself the man's fan like he was a fan of All Might and several other Heroes. But since a few of those Heroes were supposed to be there at the party, he decided he might as well stay and enjoy the event.

Getting inside wasn't actually an issue as whoever organized the party made it free for people to attend. Though the security at the entrance did make sure that the crowd inside wasn't bigger than what the concert hall at the top of the tower could handle.

The party itself however… As happy as he was to see many prominent Heroes in one place, Izuku couldn't help but feel that this whole thing was ...shallow? It basically amounted to a whole lot of Japan's best Heroes showing off, congratulating him on the birth of his son and wishing him a nice trip to the USA as well as future successes there. It was all just so gaudy.

Then, just before the final act of the party, something happened. No one was sure what happened, but suddenly the tower was shaken by an explosion of some sort. Soon, there was another, even bigger explosion that made the Sky Egg take a list. Thankfully, something - or someone - stepped in and stopped the tower from actually collapsing. Yet, whatever that explosion was, it damaged the power system and the whole tower fell into darkness with over forty thousand people locked inside.

For a while things were relatively quiet with a number of Heroes doing what they could to calm the people down and make them comfortable. Izuku even managed to get his Quirk-analysis notebooks signed by all four members of Wild Wild Pussycats. Then something happened outside and the tower began collapsing again. Thankfully, it was stopped before anything really terrible could happen, but at this point it was clear to everyone that by the end of the day, the Sky Egg will be nothing but ruins.

And at that point, despite Heroes' best attempts to keep the situation inside the tower under control, the real panic started.

The Midoriyas found themselves dragged by the terrified crowds towards the tower's observation decks where the emergency stairs were located. Except they didn't quite make it to those exits as yet another explosion happened and the tower began collapsing.

And as that happened, the people were thrown against the panoramic windows of the observation deck. The glass, while pretty strong, wasn't strong enough to withstand such a massive hit and broke. Thankfully, it did absorb most of the impact before shattering so the people did get a chance to grab onto something to avoid falling out. Thus, for a moment it looked like everyone would make it out of this perilous situation.

Then the tower shook again as one of the beam supports gave out and Izuku's hand slipped out of his mother's grip. The greenette tried to grab onto a broken piece of glass still attached to the window frame, but its jagged edge tore through his gloves and sliced his hand. With a cry of pain, Izuku let go of it and…

And he was falling.

Being in a sudden free-fall towards a very messy death put Izuku in a state of a deep shock. He couldn't even think of anything as he fell towards the ground. Then, suddenly, someone grabbed him by his hand and he was… well, he was still falling but not as fast anymore.

Turning his head to look at his 'savior', Izuku saw that it was a very beaten-up Captain Celebrity. Who, in turn, was holding onto a dark-haired teen in an All Might hoodie. The said teen was also firing what looked like compressed air from the palms of his hands to push the falling duo about.

"Hold onto me, kid!" The American Hero said as he pulled Izuku next to that teen in a hoodie. "I'll save you." He promised. It however didn't look like Captain Celebrity would be able to break their fall… The man was going to sacrifice himself so that the two of them lived!

Thankfully, just as they were about to hit the ground, All Might appeared and saved them all.

Later that night, Izuku was sitting in his room, the events of the day replaying themselves in his head. And as the green-haired boy recalled his rescue by Captain Celebrity yet again, he suddenly realized something: because his glove was torn to pieces, when the Hero grabbed him by that hand, he might have touched the man's skin with all five fingers thus, accidentally, copying his Quirk.

Wanting to confirm that that didn't actually happen and he hasn't stolen a pro-Hero's Quirk, Izuku took his gloves off and tried to create a small explosion. Except he couldn't use Explosion anymore. Instead, as he focused on it, he could feel some sort of an invisible energy barrier surrounding his body. And with a thought, he managed to float off his bed and fly around his room. He was now in possession of Captain Celebrity's Flight.

The next afternoon saw the two Midoriyas at the Naruhata Prefecture hospital where Captain Celebrity was recovering after yesterday's events. Of course, everymen weren't allowed anywhere near the resting Hero, but after a conversation with his manager, a nice young lady Makoto Tsukauchi, an exception was made for Izuku.

"You're that boy from yesterday?" The American Hero asked as Izuku entered his ward.

"Y-Yes, Sir." The greenette replied as he bowed deeply. "And… T-Thank you for saving me back there. And my mother. And everyone in the tower. It was you who held it, wasn't it?" Captain Celebrity beamed at him, apparently happy that someone recognized his efforts at preventing the Sky Egg incident from becoming a true disaster.

"I'm a Hero, lad. Saving people is what I do." He boasted from his bed.

"Also... I…" Izuku continued after taking a deep breath to keep his nervousness down. "I have a copy-Quirk and… back there my gloves were torn, so when you saved me… I accidentally copied your Quirk." Captain Celebrity's expression suddenly became unreadable. "I… Please forgive me." The man let out a sigh.

"How long will it last?" He asked.

"Until I can overwrite it with a copy of an even more powerful Quirk." Izuku replied honestly. "So… possibly forever."

"I see." The Hero said. There was a short pause before he continued: "I can't say I'm happy about this, but it was an accident so I can't really blame you - or anyone, really - that this has happened." Izuku let out a big sigh of relief. "What are you planning to do with it?" Captain Celebrity asked him next.

"I… I…" Izuku wanted to say 'nothing', to say that he would pretend he didn't have it, but he couldn't bring himself to actually say those words. Somehow, the American Pro understood him.

"That, young man, will not do." He said. "I'm a Hero and my Quirk is made for Heroes. I will be very upset if you don't use it to help other people. I won't ask you to become a Pro-Hero yourself, but don't waste the power of my Flight. I will be very sad and disappointed if you choose to become a salaryman or something equally mundane." Then he added: "And don't even think about using my Quirk to do evil, or I will use the entire might of American Heroes to destroy you."

"Y-Yes, Sir." Izuku replied. There was a pause before he asked: "So, you're allowing me to use your Quirk to become a Hero." Captain Celebrity nodded.

"Indeed." He said.

"T-Thank you, Sir." Izuku replied. "I will do my best to become a Hero worthy of your Quirk."

"I'm sure you will." The Hero said then. "Just be sure to keep the secrets of my Quirk, well, secret. You wouldn't want my enemies - and yours - to know what your weaknesses are, would you?" The green-haired boy shook his head.

"N-No, of course, not, Sir."

~/ *** \~

The next couple of years was quite interesting for Izuku. Determined to uphold the promise he had made to Captain Celebrity, he began training to, one day, become a Hero worthy of the power entrusted to him. That included physical training to build up his body as well as mastering Flight. The latter was a bit of a problem due to the Quirk-usage laws, but after some searching Izuku was able to find a secluded area where he could train without getting into trouble.

Learning to fly was pretty easy, though the spatial awareness needed to freely navigate in all three dimensions safely took some time to develop. Mastering the barrier aspect of the Quirk was a bit more challenging but, after much trial and error, Izuku was able to learn how to share it with others through touch and how to reinforce the barrier on one side at the expense of making it weaker elsewhere.

With some further experimentation, Izuku even managed to develop a move that the American Hero apparently didn't have in his repertoire. At least, he couldn't find any recordings of the man 'exploding' his barrier outwards to blow nearby things away. And stun them briefly if they were animals or people. If used correctly, it could provide a much-needed breathing space, though expending the barrier energy to do that was a risky move that left the user without protection for a few moments

Izuku recognized that shortcoming and was working on the watered down version of the move that, while weaker, wouldn't require him to use the entirety of the barrier's energy to pull off. He also believed that it should be possible to 'explode' only small areas of the barrier, which would essentially let him fire blasts of energy and compressed air in arbitrary directions. The theory behind both moves was sound, but thus far he wasn't able to pull either of them off.

Oh, well, he still had a few months till the UA entrance exams. And even if he was still unable to perform either of these moves by then, it still shouldn't be a problem. Captain Celebrity didn't need those moves to become the number one Hero in the USA, and while he had only half of the man's power, it was still a lot. Seriously, he had kept the Sky Egg - thousands tons of concrete, steel and glass - from collapsing by his lonesome!

Surely, even half of that power would be enough to pass the entrance exam into UA?

Of course, that drive for self-improvement that Izuku had 'suddenly' developed didn't go completely unnoticed by his schoolmates, but since he was still seen as that creepy, Quirk-obsessed kid, no one paid it much mind. And that served the greenette just fine.

~/ *** \~

At last, the long-awaited day of the entrance exam for the Heroics department of UA finally arrived. And while Izuku still hasn't managed to get those moves to work properly yet, he nevertheless was confident that he will not fail the tests.

That confidence, however, quickly fled him as soon as he stepped onto UA grounds. There were hundreds if not thousands of other entrants taking the exam alongside him, and quite a few of them looked like they could take on anything UA might throw at them. And seeing people like that made Izuku wonder whether he was truly ready to compete against them… Shaking his head, the green-haired teen forced those thoughts out of his head. Right now was not the time to have any doubts.

"Out of my way, extra!" An angry voice barked right next to Izuku's ear before he was shoved to the side by an angry blonde teen. Katsuki Bakugo. Despite it being years since the two of them saw each other last, the greenette instantly recognized his once-friend. And it didn't look like he has changed for the better since then. Still the same angry firecracker with a short fuse…

"Are you alright? That rude person didn't hurt you, did he?" An orange-haired girl that looked like she was a martial artists of some kind asked him.

"No, I'm fine. It's just… we used to be friends, a long time ago." Izuku said with a small sigh. The girl was silent for a few long moments, not really knowing how to reply to that.

"Ah-... Okay." She said finally. "If you're fine, then let's hurry up. The exam will be starting soon." Pausing for a second, she added: "I'm Kendo Itsuka, by the way."

"Midoriya Izuku." The green-haired teen introduced himself.

The written test was a grueling four-hours-long marathon with over sixty questions that needed to be answered. These questions also covered nearly every subject taught at school. A lot of those questions were quite difficult and required actual understanding of their topic.

Izuku was very thankful that the practical portion of the entrance exam wasn't held immediately after that. Instead, the examinees were given an hour-long break so that they could unwind a little and have some lunch.

Once this break was over, everyone was told to gather in a large conference hall. There, Present Mic explained the rules of the practical test. Which turned out to be a combat simulation with the goal of dispatching as many robotic 'villains' as possible with different models being worth different numbers of points - one, two or three - depending on how challenging those were to take down.

At that point, one of the examinees, a tall bespectacled young man with dark-blue hair, asked whether the booklets had an error since they stated that there were supposed to be not three but four different kinds of robots. As it turned out, this final model of robots was worth exactly zero points and was just an obstacle to be avoided.

Once all of the rules for the practical test were explained by the teacher, the examinees were finally allowed to open the envelopes they had been given earlier. Inside, they found a small card telling which examination site they had been assigned to. Izuku's happened to some place called 'Training Grounds Gamma'. Which, thankfully, he would be taken to by a bus.

The bus ride itself was mostly uneventful, though. Except for the fact that Izuku lucked out and had to sit next to a mean-looking guy with a drill-like pompadour who had used a bit too much of strongly-smelling hair gel this morning.

Training Grounds Gamma turned out to be a positively huge mock-up city, complete with cars, traffic lights and even a small plaza in its center. None of the robotic faux-villains the examinees were supposed to hunt down could be seen from the entrance gates, though. But they were definitely lurking somewhere within the area.

The students were given a few minutes to prepare and Izuku used them to do some stretches. Then, without any warning, Present Mic announced the start of the test. It was so sudden, though, that everyone remained standing where they were.

"What are you waiting for?" The Hero asked over the loudspeakers. "There are no countdowns in real life." That finally sprung the people into action. Being pretty close to the gates, Izuku was among the first to enter the training grounds. And as soon as he was inside, he took to the air with Flight and headed deeper into the fake city, giving most of his competition the go-by.

It wasn't long before he encountered the first group of faux-villains. A single three-pointer robot, accompanied by a pair of single-pointers. The bots weren't unaware of his approach either and as soon as he got close enough to them, they attacked. Right after delivering some very cliche B-movie killer-robot phrases.

Izuku decided against dodging those attacks even if he was perfectly able to. The reason was actually pretty simple: while training on his own, he hadn't had the means to properly test how good his barrier was at negating incoming hits. This was the perfect opportunity to remedy that.

The missiles fired by the robot struck the invisible barrier surrounding him and exploded with some rather spectacular pyrotechnics. That said, since UA obviously wasn't aiming to seriously hurt, much less kill, any of its potential students, the actual damage this explosion did was minimal. So much so that Izuku barely registered his barrier weakening as it absorbed the blast. And after a couple of seconds, it was back to its full strength.

Perhaps, he will need to look for another way to test his defenses against explosions and such. Knowing how much punishment he can safely take could prove vital one day when he is a pro-Hero. But to become a pro-Hero, he needed to pass the entrance exams first. Which, in the case of UA, involved turning a bunch of robots into scrap metal. So, Izuku pushed the thoughts about testing his limits aside and focused on destroying the faux-villains.

Which turned out to be quite easy for him as Flight, being the multi-faceted Quirk that it was, granted him a degree of super-strength in addition to the ability to fly and the protective barrier that shielded him from both elements and harm. The green-haired teen has wondered for a long time why the Quirk was registered with such a misleading name, and the best theory he had was that Captain Celebrity had done so intentionally to ensure that his strengths and weaknesses were so much harder to guess. Either way, Izuku closed the distance to the faux-villains before they could launch another barrage at him and punched the one-pointer with enough power to send the robot crashing into the nearby building. Then, without missing a beat, he grabbed the other one-pointer by its arm and swung it around like an oversized bat into the three-pointer, destroying both machines.

The ease with which he took the robots down left Izuku quite surprised. Sure, he knew that Flight, even at half of its true power, was an incredibly strong Quirk but these robots, especially the tree-pointer, looked so tough...

"We have quite an interesting crop this year." Nemuri Kayama, better known by her Hero name, Midnight, observed as she and the rest of UA's teachers watched the practical exam unfold.

"Indeed." Cementos agreed.

"That green-haired kid on camera C-35 is particularly interesting." The dominatrix-themed Heroine continued. "He is astonishingly strong, can fly and has some sort of a protective barrier that can completely shield him from a three-pointer's rockets. That's one hell of a Quirk he has." After a short pause, she added. "It actually reminds me a lot of what Captain Celebrity can do."

"Examinee #1422, Midoriya Izuku." Aizawa read from his PDA. "According to the files, his Quirk is… 'Inferior Copy'?" His voice was the usual, but to those who knew Eraserhead well enough it was clear that the man was quite surprised by what he saw. "A touch-activated copy-Quirk that is restricted to Emitter-types and can copy them at half of their full power."

"And, apparently, no time limit." One of the other teachers added. "It's been almost three years since Captain Celebrity returned to the USA? And it looks like the boy has actually trained with that Quirk."

"This young man is indeed quite interesting." Nezu spoke up from his seat at the head of the table. "I would like to see how far he can go."

The practical exam was almost over, Izuku was sure of that despite having no idea how much time had actually passed. But he wasn't too worried: he managed to acquire fifty seven points already and, as far as he knew, that was the highest score for the area. And he wasn't stopping just yet, though. His aim was to become the best Hero he could possibly be, and that included achieving the highest score he could manage for the exams.

Suddenly the ground shook and a towering robot rose above the fake city. The zero-pointer. It was huge and menacing, and the green-haired teen could see why they had been advised to avoid it. Its sheer size made it pretty much unassailable for the majority of students taking the exam. And while he could probably take it on, Izuku saw no reason to - defeating it was worth absolutely nothing, and the time he would spend fighting it would be better used to hunt a few of remaining faux-villains that would actually net him additional points.

Those plans were quickly changed when the zero-pointer caused one of the buildings to collapse, trapping a girl under the rubble. Later on Izuku would realize that she wasn't in any real danger, but at the time all that he could think was that she needed to be rescued from this perilous situation. So he threw away the thoughts about looking for more point-worthy robots and rushed in to save this girl as quickly as he could.

Upon arriving there, he noticed that the remains of the building that were still standing were quite unstable and were likely to crumple should he remove the debris the girl was trapped under all at once - with a good chance that it would bury the girl under concrete debris again. And since he couldn't be in two places at once, he won't be able to share his barrier with her to keep her safe. If he wanted to rescue the proper way, he must remove the debris she was pinned under slowly and carefully. Something he didn't really have time for while the zero-pointer was still active and heading towards them. It needed to be dealt with first.

"Can you hang in there for a few moments? I promise I will come back and save you." He said.

"I t-think my leg is broken, but I'm fine otherwise." The girl replied. Izuku nodded.

"Alright. I'll be back in a second." And with that he flew straight towards the gigantic robot. The said machine was designed in such a way that, should it ever tip over somehow, it wouldn't be able to get back up on its own. It also had all of its ranged weapons mounted on its shoulders, so it wouldn't be able to target anything on the ground while lying on its 'back'. Thus, the easiest way to deal with this behemoth that Izuku could see was to simply overturn it. Such a feat, of course, required some unbelievable strength but, luckily for the green-haired teen, Flight provided him with such strength.

Seeing him get close, the zero-pointer fired a large barrage of missiles and Izuku was forced to stop and tank them all - he couldn't allow those missiles to miss him and cause more destruction around, possibly hurting other examinees. But as soon as the explosions were over, he continued charging towards the mechanical behemoth.

Flying underneath it, Izuku grabbed onto the edge of its armored chassis and - with great effort - lifted the zero-pointed off the ground. An incredible feat that was possible only thanks to the telekinetic nature of Flight's super-strength that allowed him to give physics a middle finger and completely ignore torque created by imbalanced leverage.

He then rose higher up into the air and, after making sure that his plan wouldn't result in anyone getting hurt, he turned the zero-pointer over till it was 'looking' straight up. Then he lowered it back onto the ground. Just like he had thought, the machine was indeed incapable of getting back up on its own and was effectively neutralized. And now that the giant robot was dealt with, it was time to save the girl.

"You're back!" She exclaimed as she saw him.

"Of course." Izuku said. "Hang in there, I'm going to clear the debris." Upon her nod, he began moving chunks of concrete that she was pinned under. And as those weren't really heavy - not when compared to the zero-pointer, at least - it wasn't long before he had them all removed.

"Thank you." The girl said as she tried to stand up with his help. "I…" Before she could say anything else, though, there was a loud buzzer, followed by the Present Mic announcing that the test was over and that those in need of medical attention should see Recovery Girl.

"Would you like me to carry you to the gates?" The girl gave him an uncertain nod.

"I-If that won't be too much trouble, please." She said. Izuku responded by picking her up in a princess carry. Then, after extending his barrier to shield her as well, he set off towards the entrance gates.