DER ERLKÖNIG

CHAPTER 2:

ENDURING THE EXAM

Sometime later, Izuku grimaced as he prepared himself. He'd aced the written exam, he knew it, and he was sure Himiko would do well enough on it to pass. Of course, now came the practical exam.

Earlier, he'd had to bite his lip to prevent himself from gushing over the fact that Present Mic, of all people, was the MC for the briefing. While he still had a bad habit of muttering to himself when deep in thought, he had gotten better at keeping his monologues internal. Then, some rather stiff student had questioned Present Mic about the varieties of robots. If Izuku didn't know any better, he would have picked that one as being a relative of Ingenium, who had come to Asphodel a couple of times to help train Izuku. Only, Ingenium was a fairly laid back guy when he wasn't on the job, while this guy seemed like he had a big stick up where the sun didn't shine.

Ingenium's possible brother (and given the engines embedded in his calves, it seemed more likely) was at the battle grounds they were going to begin the exam at, as was the round-faced girl he saw earlier. Himiko wasn't there, though, and, thankfully, neither was Bakugou. Izuku merely went over what the exam was to entail while he waited.

Three types of robots to stop or destroy to get points, with a larger one acting as an obstacle worth no points. He needed to get as many as possible to get through this. He felt sorry for those without a Quirk that was useful for combat. The robots apparently had shut-off switches to facilitate those without combat Quirks, but still…

"You know they won't accept you," hissed an unwelcome voice. "Monster, they will call you, not even dignifying you with the term Villain. You should…"

Shut up, Izuku growled inwardly, trying not to show anything other than normal anxiety on his face.

When Present Mic yelled "GO!", Izuku showed only a second's hesitation, before he slammed his Vectors into the ground, and catapulted into the air. Vectors were the names given to the projections that facilitated his psychokinetic abilities. They manifested as ghostly hands reaching out from his body. On their least powerful setting, they were intangible, with him being able to make parts of them tangible. More power gave them tangibility, allowing him to lift something as large as a car with ease. Even more power gave him the ability to cut through flesh and bone as if the Vectors were the proverbial hot knife through butter.

They also had the ability to infect people with a retrovirus that ensured their children would be Diclonii, but with the vaccine having been given to the human race two centuries ago, they were already virtually immune, so he found from records Toshinori managed to get for him. Which was good. He didn't want to cause any more pain if he could help it.

He landed, his Vectors cushioning his landing, before he used the Vectors to leapfrog into the air again, having managed to get to the ersatz city that was being used as the exam grounds just ahead of the others. And he soon found his first faux-enemy, a robot that aimed its weapons at him. A swift slash from a Vector tore it to shreds.

He grinned, even as he dashed for more, using his Vectors to scale buildings and ambush robots from above. While he would in all likelihood never use his Vectors to slash apart another person, robots were another matter. And he knew more than a few people would be wondering how the hell he did this. The Vectors only made themselves visible when he cranked up the power to the highest level. In fact, of those in the faculty of UA, he was told by Nezu that only Nezu and All Might knew, along with Shouta Aizawa, aka Eraserhead, who had come to Asphodel to help with what he called 'problem children' when he wasn't teaching. Odds were, the rather grumpy Underground Hero would be one of his teachers.

Assuming he passed.

He hoped Himiko did too. She was still walking the edge between Hero and Villain, and if she didn't pass, even with the vials of blood she had, then…well, he didn't like to think about it. He hoped she would pass. While Bakugou was wrong in calling her his girlfriend, it was more due to the fact that Izuku and Himiko weren't sure whether they were boyfriend and girlfriend. They were two rather dysfunctional people clinging to each other for comfort, and while he wouldn't mind if she considered him her boyfriend, he was still not sure about it. His bullying at school and the wariness many showed him after his powers came forth hindered his ability to make friends, and romance was even worse.

He brought his attention to a square to where a bunch of prospective students were fighting robots. The strict boy he thought to be Ingenium's brother was doing pretty well. And that round-faced girl…ah, she had a gravity-based Quirk of some kind, making her foes float, and then fall to the ground to break. Another boy was firing an energy beam from his navel. Still, there were too many competitors here, and not enough robots. He needed to find somewhere else to continue to accumulate points.

His thoughts were interrupted when he heard the wail of a klaxon. A nearby building crumbled to reveal a massive robot. Izuku's eyes widened. "Wow!" breathed one of the voices in his head, the more benign one. "That is one big robot! Nana would have loved to ride that!"

Izuku shook his head. That damned monster was the Zero Pointer? Everyone was fleeing it. Izuku was sorely tempted to destroy it, if only to show he could, but refrained from doing it. However, he heard a cry of pain from the street below. He saw the round-faced girl with her legs trapped beneath a large piece of rubble.

He leapt down, and used his Vectors to lift the slab off, violently. "Can you walk?" he asked.

The girl grimaced in pain as she tried, collapsing. "I think I did something to my ankle."

Izuku grimaced in his own turn, though out of anger rather than pain. He then turned to the Zero Pointer. Intellectually, he knew that, while the exam was dangerous and potentially lethally so, the exam wouldn't be actually intentionally lethal. However, his anger at this girl being unable to flee led to his Vectors coming out full force, and they lashed out.

At speeds nobody would have been able to see, even if they could see the Vectors, thin faultlines opened up all along the Zero Pointer's lower half. It began to collapse, its lower half turned to metal confetti. Only then did Izuku regain enough presence of mind to pick up the girl, and used his Vectors to leap out of the area, landing right near the boy who could be Ingenium's brother. Izuku panted, wiping away a trickle of blood that came from his nose. While he didn't exactly push himself to his limits for that, imbuing his Vectors with enough force to bring down the Zero Pointer (which was made out of far tougher material than the previous robots) had used more than he usually did, and he hadn't had that much of a chance to push the sheer power of his Vectors to the limit in Asphodel, merely his control over them.

"What happened?" the boy asked. "What did you do to it?"

"Used my Quirk on it," Izuku said, panting in exhaustion. "Does anyone have some sort of healing Quirk? For her, I mean."

"Your nose is bleeding," the girl said.

"I'm…I'm perfectly fine," Izuku said. He wasn't, or at least not perfectly fine. He began to feel some aches all over his body, like he'd just endured one of Bakugou's sessions of using Izuku as a punching bag, but nothing too major, he hoped.

Suddenly, Present Mic's voice rang out over the arena, with the exam time now being up. The tall boy seemed to realise something. "I know you! My brother spoke of you! Izuku Midoriya!"

"…Are you Ingenium's brother? Tensei's brother?"

"Indeed. I am Tenya Iida! It's good to meet the boy my brother speaks of so highly!" the boy introduced himself, his movements rather robotic and stiff.

The girl Izuku had helped decided to introduce herself. "Ochako Uraraka," she said, before gagging slightly. "Sorry, overuse of my Quirk makes me nauseous."

"That's fine," Izuku said, looking around at the debris-filled exam grounds. "I hope what I did was an overreaction. These may be exams, but that damned thing was dangerous. It could have hurt someone if there weren't enough failsafes." Izuku noticed the frown on Tenya's face. "What's wrong?"

"…It is probably nothing," Tenya said quietly.

Soon, they were interrupted by an elderly-looking lady wearing a futuristic visor and hobbling around on a cane with the end shaped like a hypodermic. Izuku soon recognised her as Recovery Girl, whose Quirk accelerated the healing process of those she kissed, though at the cost of depleting their stamina. She kissed both Ochako and Izuku, and gave them some gummies to keep their blood sugar up, both after the exertions of the exam, as well as after their stamina was drained from the healing. She clucked about his recklessness, but still, he could tell her scolding was mild.

As they headed away from the testing grounds, Izuku knew, whatever anyone else thought, that he was definitely in with a chance for UA. He just hoped Himiko and these others would get in too. But he knew, even before he knew the results of the exam that UA would be his hero academia. That he was on the first steps to truly becoming a hero…

Aizawa's bloodshot eyes reviewed the footage from the exams from the rear of the viewing room, frowning as he did so. He wasn't surprised that Izuku sliced up the Zero Pointer one bit, or at least part of it. While he understood the need to formulate a practical exam that would take altruistic and self-sacrificing qualities into account, there were better ways than a huge robot. True, there were safety mechanisms built in, but he reckoned that this version of the practical existed to give Nezu's sadistic urges an outlet and the support classes something to do for assignments, and there had been accidents before, even if fatalities hadn't occurred for years.

The way Izuku's nose began bleeding was concerning, though. Had he pushed himself too far? Or was the Zero Pointer simply overengineered compared to the far more fragile robots used? It was something Aizawa would need to look into if Izuku ended up in his class. However, the boy was assured entry into UA, he was certain.

Toga had shown herself to be a rather cunning opponent, utilising the strengthening Quirk of the person whose blood she drank just as she reached the city to the full. She got less rescue points than Izuku, though this was admittedly because she worked with ambush tactics, though she rescued a couple of people from that arena's Zero Pointer.

And Bakugou…well, Aizawa knew that this particular problem child had earned no rescue points, and would probably sneer at the concept. While this was by no means a completely disastrous trait in a hero (Endeavour, despite having the personality of a burning rubbish heap, was generally conscious of collateral damage, and even helped people where he could, as long as the villain was either subdued or absent), it would require a lot of work. And the problem is, Bakugou was, academically, brilliant. Combine that with an ego the size of a planet and a massive superiority complex, and, well…Aizawa was not looking forward to teaching him discipline.

Nezu trotted up to him, and agilely leapt onto Aizawa's shoulders. "Nezu," Aizawa greeted laconically. "What is it?"

"I presume you noticed Izuku's little bout of epistaxis?"

"Expanding my vocabulary is rational, but can't you say nosebleed like a normal person? And yes, I did."

"…That worries me. We'll have to work on his endurance. Recovery Girl could help, but…well, it reminds me of the Kamakura Incident."

Aizawa frowned. That was the title given to the deaths that happened worldwide as a result of military action in Kamakura, which itself was linked to the Diclonius genocide. In particular, the actions of the Diclonius codenamed 'Lucy'. Aizawa hadn't read much about the event, partly due to its mostly classified nature, so he shot Nezu a meaningful look.

"During her final moments, Lucy, well, Kaede, pushed herself further and further, using her abilities in an attempt to wipe out humanity after succumbing to her anger and hatred from the apparent death of the boy she loved," Nezu explained. "Eventually, her body began to decay from what was effectively accelerated entropy. The boy whom she loved killed her because she demanded it, and by that time, she was liquefying, so death would have been a mercy. I am hoping history is not repeating itself. We do need to push the boy to surpass his limits, to go Plus Ultra, Aizawa, but not at the cost of killing him."

"The politicians who resisted his coming here would be glad if he melted," Aizawa snarked. "They'd probably throw a party. You want me to guide him?"

"As long as he meets your stringent standards," Nezu said. "But I would prefer that you didn't expel your entire class this year."

Aizawa gave a non-committal grunt. He would have to see to make sure. Nezu, however, wasn't done. "I'm putting those three into your class. However, I intend for the seating arrangement to have Izuku and Bakugou far apart. I know what you're thinking, that this is a bad idea, but unfortunately, all we have is Izuku's testimony. The schools they went to have closed ranks, we're under pressure to reunite Bakugou with his…ahem, dear friend, and Bakugou has gained some public sympathy for that incident when he was attacked by the Sludge Villain."

Aizawa scowled, remembering the incident. "While I can understand the hesitation of some of the heroes, others didn't try hard enough to rescue Bakugou. It took All Might's attack to free him." And as much as Aizawa detested the Number 1 Hero's bombast and recklessness, he appreciated the fact that All Might had his heart in the right place.

"And unfortunately, his psych reports have nothing major we can use. Which proves the adage of how many psychologists does it take to screw in a lightbulb. Only one, but the lightbulb has to want to change," Nezu remarked. "That being said, I don't intend for him to cause any trouble, and neither should you. Physical bullying will not be tolerated if you witness it, and any training sessions will have to be supervised carefully. And if he does cross the line…well, we are here to teach future heroes, not bullies."

"Tell that to Endeavour," Aizawa snarked.

"I never said I was perfect," Nezu said quietly, his voice filled with years of regret…

CHAPTER 2 ANNOTATIONS:

Oh dear. Keep in mind, while Nezu doesn't want to have Izuku and Bakugou in the same class, he has no reason to prevent them, as the only witness against him is Izuku.

No numbered annotations this time.