Fuyumi wished me a good day for my first day. I was in the same class and seated next to the black-haired girl with the creation quirk. Our Teacher stopped us from attending the orientation demonstration, telling us to put on our uniforms and head to the sports field.
"A quirk apprehension test?!"
One of the other students was asking, "What about the ceremony, and the guidance counseling?"
"If you want to be heroes, you don't have time for that," said Mr. Aizawa, our teacher. "You all understand the school's reputation for freedom on campus. That freedom goes for us teachers too. The softball pitch, the standing long jump, the 50 meter dash, endurance running, grip strength, sustained sideways jumps, upper body exercise, seated to touch. These are all activities you know from middl school, naturally. Physical tests where you were barred from using your quirks. The country still hasn't gotten around to standardizing those sorts of records, or keeping track of average performance levels. Well, that's negicence on the part of MEXT. Bakugo," he said, turning to a tall, athletic boy with spiky blonde hair, "How far could you pitch a softball in middle school?"
"6-7 meters," the boy - Bakugo - answered.
"Try using your quirk this time around. As long as you don't exit the circle, anything is fine. Don't hold back."
"Got it," he said, winding up to pitch - then screaming "DIE!" as the ball blasted out of his hand with a giant explosion, flying far into the distance.
"Before anything else, one must know what they're capable of," said Sensei, holding up a measuring calculator for all of us to see. 705.2 meters! "This is a rational metric that will form the basis of your 'hero foundation'.
"Awesome!" cheered a girl in the crowd, "That looks so fun!"
The teacher friend at her. "It looks like fun, you say? So you were planning to spend your three years here having a good old time? What happened to becoming heroes? All right, then. In that case, the student who ranks last in total points will be judged hopeless and instantly expelled. Our freedom means we dispense with students as we please." He gave a strange grin. "Welcome to the Hero Department."
Another girl protested, "This is our first day! Even if it wasn't, that's just unfair!"
"Natural disasters, massive accidents, ego-mad villains…all kinds of calamities can happen when we least expect them. The world is full of unfairness. It's our jobs as heroes to reverse it all, and restore reason. If you were counting on a friendly chat at the local McDonald's after school, that's too bad. From now on, for the next three years, all you can expect from life at UA is one hardship after the next. This is 'plus ultra'. I expect you to overcome these trials and climb to the top. Now then, that was the demonstration. Time to step up to the plate."
The events mostly passed by, for me, without incident. Mastering quirk-based tests is easy for me; my power was designed to be formidable. The only incident of note was during the ball toss. A boy with curly green hair got into trouble with the teacher, though it was hard to see for what. He finally succeeded in throwing the ball even further than Bakugo, though it seemed to result in his finger breaking, and for some reason angered Bakugo, who ran out of line to yell at him only to be restrained by the teacher. It seemed like Bakugo and Midoriya knew each other…and as though they had some sort of problem with one another.
In the end, I'd come in second place, after the girl named Yaoyorozu from the entrance exam. The teacher revealed that nobody was to be thrown out after all.
All in all, a distinctly strange first day.
