Izuku was panicking.

'Oh my god, oh my god, oh...' he chanted like a mantra, until eventually, 'The practical is about to start! I didn't even get a chance to try a test run of One for All before getting here!'

This was bad. He was walking out of the bus and perhaps ten minutes to warm up and mentally prepare himself before he took the most important test of his life. Yet, here he was panicking…

Then, he walked out of the bus and settled into a calculated trance as he stopped panicking in favor of doing everything he could think of to not utterly flop his one and only chance at U.A.'s Practical Entrance Exam.

'By now, the hair should have been digested; I should have One for All as my Quirk,' he thought. 'Now I just need to figure out how to activate it,' he said as he came to a stop in an isolated corner away from the main group of examinees.

'Just clench your buttcheeks and scream "Smash!"' All Might's initial advice crossed his mind before Izuku cringed and tossed the thought.

'No, no, no… I need something more concrete: A trigger,' Izuku thought. His mind wandering straight over to his one-time friend Katsuki Bakugo, he added, "Kacchan told me he activated and gained control of his Quirk by flexing and tensing the muscles in his hands and fingers."

As a second example, his mother came to mind as he thought, 'And even though mom never really talked too much to me about her Quirk, I know she always uses a waving, beckoning motion when she wants to attract things.'

'But One for All...' Izuku grimaced, recalling everything he knew about the Quirk.

…

"All Might..." Izuku recalled a memory from months ago. He was taking a break after having moved around a hundred kilograms worth of lightweight trash from Dagobah Beach, when in between deep breaths, he asked, "What even… is… your Quirk, really?"

"Whatever do you mean?" All Might asked back, eyebrows scrunched in confusion. "I told you how One for All works."

"Right..." Izuku sat up, trying to ignoring the burning pain in his developing muscles as he said, "One for All is a transferable power stockpiling Quirk. But, I mean… Why have there never been heroes before you with the same skill set?"

Lost in his thoughts at this point, he began to mutter, "I can't recall any past heroes having so much as a tenth of your strength and speed without any mutation traits, and yet you're supposed to be the eight holder of the Quirk? Would the past holders manifest One for All differently; maybe depending on their own original Quirks?"

"Why have there even been seven people before you?" Unbeknownst to Izuku, by this point All Might had narrowed his eyes on him, "Even if One for All was a Quirk from the Emergence Era, two-hundred plus years ago, shouldn't it have only been passed down four, maybe five, times at most? If I were to become the ninth holder a couple months from now, the Quirk would have an average of being passed down in less than thirty years in the very best case scenario..."

"Young Midoriya," All Might said, drawing Izuku from his muttering trance. When he had the boy's attention, he said, "You are very perceptive; almost frighteningly so..." He cringed slightly before he began to tell Izuku about the more nuanced aspects of One for All and a bit about its history.

…

'One for All is a transferable, power stockpiling Quirk,' Izuku recited as the time for the practical to begin continued to tick down. 'It can theoretically stockpile any form of power and be used to amplify the effects of any Quirk. Until All Might got it, the power it stockpiled was mostly used to improve the original Quirks of our predecessors, but since we are both Quirkless...'

'All Might said he been given One for All when he was fifteen, just like me… So, while he's had decades to cultivate the physical strength in One for All from nothing, I have to start from where he left off this morning...' Izuku decided at that moment to not use more than a fraction of a fraction of all of One for All's power. He had the feeling that trying to use even a fifth of All Might's full power would cripple him immediately.

'Now for the trigger...' Izuku continued to think, 'It obviously can't be like Kacchan or mom. They pretty much just use their hands to activate their Quirk. But, One for All… I mean, just looking at All Might transform, he obviously does something to his whole body.'

"Hmm..." Izuku groaned as he closed his eyes and tried to feel for some power swimming in his body. Being as well versed with heroics as he was, after he failed to feel anything vaguely, he tried to find some sort of energy storing organ in his body.

He failed to feel something from his head. Probing in his heart did little but calm his heart rate slightly. But then, when he concentrated on an area just below his navel…

Zzzt

Izuku's eyes snapped open as he found his body had become wrapped by the faintest sheen of green electricity.

"Ok, ok..." Izuku ignored it when some of his fellow examinees started looking at him and whispering. "I can activate it, now—" He tried to take a step and proceeded to fall on his face.

"Damn," Izuku cut off One for All to stand back on his feet, feeling more humiliation from the crowd's laughter than pain from falling face first.

"AND… START!" Worse yet, before he could try to use his Quirk again, Present Mic announced the start of the practical exam.

…

Nearly five minutes passed, with Izuku failing to earn even a single point.

Not only had he been left behind as the fastest of his group of examinees in Mock City B rushed to get all the points down the mock city's main street that ran down the middle, but even after he tried to splinter off to an alley to find some mock villain robots, he found himself helpless.

Izuku couldn't use his Quirk to walk, nevermind run. He also couldn't get close enough to a robot to try a punch as he was either ganked by other students or faced the rubber bullets and missiles of the one and three-pointers. At the rate he was going, he was bound to finish the test without a single point.

"Damn it!" Izuku, in a rare moment of anger and frustration, subconsciously punched a wall with One for All active. He had come this far, endured All Might's training for a full ten months, just to fail in his hero career before it could start?

'I need to take start taking out robots,' He was just as quick to calm as he was to heat up as he knew subconsciously how stupid it would be to waste time being upset with reality. 'But I don't have the speed or defense to get past the robot's attacks.'

He looked down and flinched slightly as he found that the wall he had punched cratered, leaving behind pieces of rubble. Looking at the pieces of shattered brick, a solution to his problem appeared in his mind.

'Long range attacks, of course!' Izuku picked up three pieces of the sturdiest, cleanest looking pieces of rubble before he ran off to find more robots.

In just a couple seconds, he found a one pointer idly patrolling. A second later, a chunk of its body along with one of Izuku's pieces of rubble exploded, felling the robot. 'I can throw!' Izuku simply thought as he began to use the tactic to hunt down more robots.

Often, he missed his throws as he wasn't all that proficient in throwing to begin with and his control of One for All was still as bad as it could be. However, even a failed throw would end up blowing up a piece of wall into more pieces of ammunition for him to use against more robots. And thus, Izuku began to acquire points very… very, slowly.

...

Twelve minutes into the fifteen-minute long exam, the dynamic shifted with the advent of the zero-pointer.

"You can't be serious," Izuku added to the shared disbelief of just about every examinee across all the Mock Cities. He had just watched as a skyscraper-sized robot clawed its way out of the ground and started chasing after some of his peers.

He was about to join the rest of the fleeing examinees around him, when he heard a soft whimper.

"Ow," it came from the direction of the zero-pointer.

The sound called to Izuku like a moth to a flame and soon he was sprinting into the fray. Quickly enough Izuku found her, the girl that had saved him from tripping before entering UA's auditorium for the day's orientation. She was trapped under a mound of rubble and in the split second he saw her, he calculated.

'God, this is going to suck,' his subconscious felt like reminding him as he breathed in a gulp of dusty air, still sprinting over to help the girl.

The moment he was before her downed form, his body lit up with green electricity. He took care to not move his legs too much as he shoved hundreds of kilograms worth of rubble with his hands in a matter of seconds and picked her up.

By the time he began running away with the girl in his hands, the zero-pointer was less than a hundred meters away from him. He had been tired before springing into action, having persisted for over ten minutes running around in the mock city before subsequently throw-hunting for robots. Now, he was struggling to remain conscious as he carried the girl and ran like his life depended on it.

Fortunately, a couple seconds into his run, just when he was starting to doubt whether or not he'd be able to carry on running with the girl weighing him down, she literally turned weighless.

"AND… STOP!" Eventually, Present Mic said, causing Izuku to almost throw the girl and falling spread eagle to catch his breath.

He settled for awkwardly coming to a stop and gently setting the girl down before dropping dead as exhaustion consumed him. To his side, he could hear the girl vomit what seemed like rainbows and everything she had eaten in the past week as a final thought crossed his mind before going under.

'Running around probably didn't help her case much if nausea is a side effect of her gravitational Quirk.'