I was all ready to head over to the hole in the wall and start kicking some "Villain" ass, but Kirishima and Kaminari stopped me.
"We have to finish the rescue exercises first!"
"Yeah, man - and look, Todoroki's already got it covered."
Damn IcyHot had blocked Gang Orca - or tried to - with some kinda iceberg. But no way a top pro was gonna go down to that alone! I tried to tell them that, but they kept insisting on wasting time rescuing those HUC losers.
"C'mon Bakugou, we're having a test!"
"This is about rescue exercises" blah blah blah, stuff like that. And they wasted so much time dragging those losers to 'safe ty' that before I knew it there was -
BZZZZT!
And the announcer said, "AHEM! AT PRESENT, EVERY LAST HUC MEMBER ON THE FIELD HAS BEEN RESCUED FROM IMPEDING DANGER. THEREFORE, I DECLARE THAT THIS TEST IS OVER! THE RESULTS WILL BE ANNOUNCED ONCE ALL THE SCORES ARE TALLIED. THOSE WITH INJURIES, PLEASE PROCEED TO THE MEDICAL AREA. EVERYONE ELSE GET CHANGED AND STAND BY FOR INSTRUCTIONS.
"Really?" said Kaminari.
"We were the last ones?" said Kirishima.
"But I wanted to break some skulls!" I growled, pissed off. The first chance in this stupid second half of the test to do something real and I'd wasted it. Damn lame test.
Everyone changed back into their uniforms. Everyone was acting tense about the test, whether they'd passed or not. I wasn't too worried - wasn't like I'd had the chance to screw something up like Deku might - but still, yeah. Worth wondering about.
There was a weird kinda tension though around IcyHot. Or at least it seemed so, since Deku kept looking at him with this weird worried look, the kind he only wears when he thinks someone's in trouble. I hadn't caught much, but IcyHot must've done something back at the exam that meant there was good reason to be worried.
Ha. Guess I'll have something over you at last.
We gathered together before the announcer again.
"IT'S BEEN A LONG BATTLE, BOYS AND GIRLS, BUT NOW IT'S TIME FOR THE RESULTS. BEFORE THAT THOUGH…REGARDING THE SCORING SYSTEM, WE OF THE HEROES PUBLIC SAFETY COMMISSION, ALONG WITH THE MEMBERS OF HUC WERE DEDUCTING POINTS ON TWO ISSUES AS WE WATCHED YOU PERFORM. ESSENTIALLY, WE JUDGED YOU ON YOUR ABILITY TO ACT FLAWLESSLY IN A CRISIS. ANYHOW, HERE ARE THE NAMES OF THOSE WHO PASSED THE TEST, IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER. KEEPING EVERYTHING IV'E SAID IN MIND, PLEASE TAKE A LOOK."
I shoved past Kirishima and Kaminari to take a look at the results.
C'mon, c'mon, where? Where is it? Bakugou Ka tsuki?
I looked again. And again.
Nothing.
One after another my classmates were shouting out that their names were there. That they'd passed. Next to me I heard Kirishima mumbling "I passed but -" as he looked at me.
I could barely choke it out. "I didn't."
And somehow, like watching a car crash, my eyes traveled down the list of Ms, because I had to see. Yeah. There it was. MIDORIYA IZUKU.
Deku had passed the provisional license exam, and I...had failed.
Even hearing vaguely that Todoroki had failed too didn't help. It all became noise. Somehow, even though I wasn't even looking at him, even though we we standing with our class, we were suddenly kids on a schoolyard, as I watched his back seem to disappear into the distance...
