Emma remembered how time seemed to pass when she was little-back before the truth had come out and everything they'd ever known had been completely decimated. It crept by at an achingly slow pace, filled with countless hours of running throughout the forest, playing chess with Mama, and learning how to do chores around the House.
(The chores always seemed to take the longest.)
They'd watch the kids around them grow, watch them get shipped off while being blissfully unaware of their imminent deaths.
She'd read in books how time seemed to fly so quickly, waiting for no one. It wasn't until after Conny's shipment day that she realized what the people in her books had meant.
The months leading up to their escape seemed to pass far too quickly, especially after Norman's shipment, with the fear of Mama knowing and Ray being unable to act as a double agent clouding their plans and creating a strange void of time that flew both at supersonic speeds and slower than molasses.
It was like that now, with the entrance exam a steadily blooming obstacle upon their horizon, obscuring Emma's vision with anxiety-fueled studying and over-exercising in an attempt to compensate for her lack of quirk. The small gym that resided in the lower levels of their apartment complex was slowly becoming a second home to her.
Emma was in a grade higher than Gilda and Anna, so while the three of them all had relatively similar workloads, upon catching up on the school curriculum none of the material they were covering was the same. The two younger girls could study together while Emma was left desperately seeking time in the increasingly busy schedules of Norman and Ray.
It wasn't their fault, she knew. They had quirks. And, by law, they were required to attend counseling to learn about said quirks.
At least Ray wasn't destroying parts of their apartments with stray flames anymore, the flames and sparks that spout from his hands dimming down without the help of the mild quirk suppressants he'd been prescribed after originally starting quirk counseling.
He'd initially been very much against the prescribed drugs, it wasn't until he set off the fire alarms of their entire building did he agree to temporarily take the small dosages, just until the stray flames grew less unpredictable.
His counselor claimed it was due to how they were raised. Normally, a child's quirk would grow as steadily as they do, allowing practice and experience to be their teacher so that once it was powerful enough to cause great harm there was already a tight reign of control.
Grace Field used strong quirk suppressants on any child with potentially dangerous quirks. It wasn't surprising that he'd had so little control upon escaping the farm.
Even with the seemingly endless drag of time, the morning of the entrance exams came far too quickly. The months passed by in an endless blur of online school, studying, and helping to care for the younger children that still very much so relied upon Emma and the other older kids.
She'd woken up far too early, unable to fall back to sleep and instead content to get in some last-minute studying as she watched sunlight slowly start to seep in through her bedroom window. When her alarm finally went off, she headed into the bathroom to brush and braid her hair over her missing ear, and changed into what she hoped was appropriate attire for a high school entrance exam.
Emma left that morning, flanked by both Norman and Ray as the faint remnants of winter clung to them in the morning mist.
They'd be taking their first actual, official, in-person exam. They'd be flanked by people their own age, not just the same set of cattle children that they'd known their entire lives.
It was a strange, jittery feeling. One of excitement and the vaguely anxiety-induced feeling that came with any test. Emma, for once in her life, seemed to be speechless, her thoughts swirling and twirling within her mind too quickly to allow any coherent sentences to escape.
Her gaze shifted over to where Ray was walking beside her, his hair drooping down over his forehead in a style she'd grown used to seeing, clouding his vision and blocking those around him from viewing his entire face.
He was thinking, his expression entirely too familiar.
"Nervous?" she prodded, faltering in her steps so that she was directly at his side.
"No. I'm just wondering if you'll even be able to pass."
Emma tripped over her own feet, stumbling forward and turning to face the dark-haired boy, "What?"
Norman chuckled from her other side, his footsteps falling silent as he paused along with the other two, "It's a valid concern," he noted. The traitor. "The practical portion of the exam is entirely geared towards those with physical quirks. I don't even know if I'll be able to pass, depending on what the exam entails."
Emma let out a deflated groan, her giddy mood immediately souring, "You don't even want to pass the hero portion, you're aiming for the management department," she accused, "Besides, we survived countless demons, how hard could an entrance exam actually be?"
"Pretty hard, from what I've read online," Ray mentioned, moving around Emma's stalled form and continuing down the sidewalk.
Emma took the hint, grabbing Norman by the hand and dragging him along as she matched Ray's pace, passing buildings with windows of hero merch and various people making their morning commutes. "But that's for, y'know, normal people with no combat experience."
"None of us have really fought anything for the past two years," Ray countered.
"Well, yeah, but we survived Goldy Pond without much training."
"We had help from all of the others who'd been fighting for years."
Norman decided to intervene then, a soft smile on his face as he attempted to diffuse the teasing argument, "Emma, I think what Ray's trying to say is that it wouldn't hurt to be a little cautious. Overconfidence isn't always the best when it comes to tests like this."
Emma bit her lip, holding back any further words yet pouting nonetheless as they continued the walk towards the train station.
"Well, that's too bad," she decided, her hands fiddling with the hem of her t-shirt as the three of them reached their destination, entering the crowded area and slipping into the lines that led to the train platforms, "if worst comes to worse, I can always enter the general education course and beat the hero kids in the sports festival."
The car they entered was stuffy, and slightly foul-smelling from the presence of too many bodies being shoved into too-little space. She could recognize the forms of other people her age, anxiously reading through last-minute notes on their phones or staring blankly out of the train windows.
The atmosphere was-in all honesty-quite suffocating, and Emma couldn't contain her relief as they finally pulled up to their stop.
Thank god the school was close to their residence.
Emma was the first off, a new wave of excited adrenaline coursing through her body as she rushed out of the station and down the street. She could hear the confused shouts of Ray and Norman from behind her as they followed, stopping with her as they took in the appearance of the school that spread out before them.
Various other kids crowded around, dressed in uniforms as they hurried into the building, following signs that read "Entrance Exam This Way" and avoiding interacting with the other test-takers.
"It's bigger than I imagined," she finally said, turning to face the others.
"Yeah. Of course it is. It's UA," Ray deadpanned, as if that were explanation enough.
It probably was.
"Were we supposed to bring some sort of uniform?" she asked, noting how the others all seemed to be dressed in monotone slacks and button-down blazers. Emma looked down at her own clothing, suddenly feeling very, very underdressed.
"No, there was no uniform requirement for us since we were technically homeschooled," Norman confirmed, "we'll be fine."
"Well, this is it then," Emma turned, walking towards the school, shaking away the last of her anxiety as excitement seized her body. She joined the other students on their way to their designated testing rooms, Norman and Ray close by her side.
The written portion of the test was easy.
Too easy.
She'd been expecting the slightest level of difficulty in each subject. Heck, the only subjects that were even slightly challenging were centered around quirk laws-something that was still quite foreign to her, as she didn't even have a quirk to begin with and her catch-up work was altered to fit that small fact.
Emma was beginning to think that the school system was the slightest bit discriminatory to quirkless people.
But other than the subjects of human-world history and quirks… it was all stuff that had been drilled deep into her head from the moment she'd begun the morning tests at Grace Field. She'd had to force herself to slow down and fully read over the questions, reminding herself that there was no set time limit for her to answer each one. Even so, she'd been the first in her testing room to turn in the exam.
As the timer went off and the pro-hero that'd been observing them called for the remaining testers to turn in their papers, Emma had wondered if Norman and Ray had also been the first to finish in their rooms.
When they finally arrived at the testing site for the practical portion, the testing anxiety had returned full-force.
The large, baggy t-shirt she wore did little to combat the chilly air as she stood in front of Battle Center A, her eyes scanning over the various other testers. Most held themselves with extreme confidence, some even seemed to be discreetly flashing their quirks.
Were they trying to intimidate people? she wondered, That's not very heroic.
Another soft breeze drifted across the testers, and Emma tried her best to repress the shiver that shot across her arms, cutting through the thin fabric of her sleeves. She really should've invested in better clothing to work out in, although to be fair she'd never even had the need for winter work-out attire prior to this.
The pro-hero observing them from atop the battle center's gate spoke out, their voice ringing across the crowds of teenagers as she called for the start of the exam.
Emma didn't hesitate, shooting out through the open gate as she scanned the empty shell of a city that UA had created. The energy that thrummed through her veins was a strange, familiar feeling.
It looks completely normal at first, but it's not, she realized, looking to the empty office buildings and convenience stores, it's kind of like Goldy Pond.
She didn't know where she drew the comparison from, but the strange sense of foreboding she felt when looking across the deserted city was just too familiar.
As if on cue, the shell of an apartment complex exploded before her, from the settling dust emerged a large, scorpion-like robot. It's legs scrambled forwards in a strange, spider-like pattern as Emma quickly jumped back, dodging it sharply as another tester quickly barreled in front of her, decimating the shell of the robot with a large explosion and leaving it in a sparking heap on the faux-city street.
"Get out of the damn way!"
The other test-taker didn't spare her a second glance, instead opting to hurry away down the street in a parade of explosions.
Rude, Emma thought, quickly approaching the fallen 2-Pointer and looking over its crumpled form. A single long, metal rod stuck up from the wrecked robot, and Emma carefully pried it out from where it sat amongst a cluster of jumbled wires and singed metal.
The rod fit comfortably in her hands, one end of it crushed and morphed in a way that created a jagged, sharp edge.
She smiled, scanning over the composition of the 2-Pointer and taking note of the locations of every wire and joint. The explosion-boy seemed to have crushed the majority of its body, sparing only the head and spindling scorpion tail, so it wouldn't be too accurate…
If she just managed to ram the pipe under the outer paneling, or dismantle the joints…
Emma pulled the ends of her sleeves over the metal rod, she didn't think they'd give the robots enough electrical charge to actually seriously injure anyone, but at least this would diminish the damage if there was.
She took off down the street, turning off down an alley and coming face-to-face with a 1-Pointer.
She let out a short squeak as she dodged, forcefully ramming the twisted metal into it's single wheel, forcing down her weight and watching a hole tear through. The action seemed to throw off the robot's balance as it teetered to the side, smashing into the stone wall of a building and breaking off into several, smaller pieces.
So, the 1-Pointers really were meant to be easy.
She could hear what seemed to be several loud explosions drifting from the main street to her left, although the sound was warped and scattered, her lack of an ear creating a small handicap in that sense.
Emma pried the rod out of the robot's tire and hurried down the rest of the alleyway, encountering a second 2-Pointer.
Adrenaline coursed through her body as she jammed the rod into it's strange, light-bulb lined face, the rod hitting dead-center and causing the robot's movements to shift awkwardly as it's lights dimmed and it collapsed onto the ground.
Huh, so that was its weak spot. It's head.
That was a piece of information she knew how to exploit.
She ran off along the side streets, attacking various robots as they passed her by and mentally tracking the numbers painted onto their bodies.
Two 3-Pointers, a 1-Pointer, four 2-Pointers…
By the time she ran into another tester, quickly stabbing between the gaping jaw of the 3-Pointer towering over them after they'd fallen back, she'd managed to rack up fifteen points.
That had to be good, right?
She was met with the overwhelming stench of caramel and singed metal when she stepped back onto the main road, a hand reaching up to shield her eyes from the billowing piles of smoke that flew from the wreckage.
Was this the work of that one explosion boy?
A five-minute warning sounded overhead, dragging her out of her thoughts and back into the present. The metal rod in her hands was beat-up and losing its sharp edge, the thinner portions threatening to snap at any moment.
Another explosion went off, echoing throughout the streets and muddling her already messed-up hearing further. There was a large crash from a bit further down the street as a robot was slammed into a building. The unsteady material gave way, the robot crashing through the empty windows and disappearing into the stone structure.
Heck, she'd all but forgotten how much sound seemed to echo without an actual ear to funnel it properly. That would be a problem in future hero work.
The tell-tale sound of rock cracking and splitting was the only warning they got before pieces of the building began to crumble. Her eyes locked upon a head of wild, purple hair that was situated far too close to where the robot had crashed.
Emma sprinted, barely managing to grab the arm of the boy and dragging him out of the way before piles of dusty rubble came tumbling down.
"Are you okay?" she barely managed to ask, her breathing unsteady and labored from both adrenaline and the nonstop physical exertion.
The boy simply nodded, briefly glancing her way and offering a small "thanks" in return before running off, supposedly searching for more robots.
He'd looked tired. Really tired.
The boy vaguely reminded her of Ray.
Emma paused to watch him disappear around a corner.
She wondered how Norman and Ray were doing. Both their written and practical testing sites were separate, giving her no insight as to how well they might've been doing.
Ray would probably be quick to use his flames, singeing the wiring within the robots before they had a chance to fight back. Norman… he would've found out their weaknesses by now, for sure-but actually attacking and taking them down? He was smart, but his physical strength was… less than ideal.
In a test that seemed to be geared towards flashy and destructive quirks, she wasn't sure what plan he might've created to win. Knowing Norman, he probably had something to work with, but still…
It suddenly hit her that Norman wanted to be in the management course. It could go either way.
If he decided he'd prefer the hero course, he'd do well. But if his first choice was management…
He was going to purposefully flunk the practical, wasn't he?
Another explosion went off just down the street, filling the air with billows of smoke and creating a thin haze over her vision. A series of crashing pops echoed out from the direction of the blonde explosion boy.
She quickly turned and headed the other way.
A single 3-Pointer lingered on the road, one of its arms barely hanging on at the joint but otherwise completely intact. She rammed the twisted metal rod into the center of its oddly-shaped head, wincing as her rod snapped clean down the center as she applied far too much force.
That was… 18 points?
She turned to look throughout the rubble, wiping a stray lock of hair out of her face as sweat welded the strands uncomfortably across her forehead. There had to be something she could use to fight.
Before she could begin sifting through the rubble, the ground began to shake, the buildings near the back of the city crumbling away and tumbling down in billowing clouds of concrete dust. It jolted the ground around Emma, causing her to nearly fall as she steadied herself.
Screams filled the air as other testers began to desperately flee towards the entrance of the battle center.
Someone tripped over a pile of rubble, and she hurried to help them up, moving to ask them about what exactly was happening when she spotted it. The student scrambled away before she could speak, leaving her standing awkwardly in the center of panicked crowds of test-takers.
Looming up above the buildings was the vague figure of a robotic head, creeping steadily closer and leaving a path of destruction in its wake.
A 0-Pointer.
How much money did this school have?
There was too much rubble situated throughout the main street, singed rocks and smoldering metal creating small blockades that testers either had to maneuver around or somehow climb over.
The explosion boy went and left a really big mess, hadn't he?
Emma took a small second to compose her thoughts, before moving in the direction of the 0-Pointer, helping students over the blockades of rubble and directing them down the side-streets that she knew led back to the entrance, thoughts of defeating any remaining robots completely forgotten.
It wasn't until a voice sounded overhead, calling for the end of the exam, did she realize.
She only had 21 points.
Oh god, she was going to be stuck in Gen Ed, wasn't she?