I do not own My Hero Academia or JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.
"HERO!" Holding Out slammed its fist into another Two-Pointer. The robot's metal body crumpled like cardboard under the punch, and it fell to the ground.
"Thirty-two points." Izuku counted as he looked around for another faux villain. He spotted one, but that mean guy with the glasses promptly destroyed it with a strong kick. Izuku hoped it was just coincidence that he seemed to always be around him, and the guy wasn't tailing him, trying to steal his kills.
Izuku was doing pretty well, all things considered. But the constant buzzes of his quirk weren't helping him concentrate. As it turns out, having too many things buzzing in every direction can cause a headache.
It wasn't a drawback that he had ever realised existed before now. He'd been present at tons of villain fights before and never had this problem. But he could think of a couple reasons why it hadn't been an issue before now. Firstly, most villain attacks were pretty small scale. The days when villain attacks had been massive ordeals that threatened entire cities had come and gone long before Izuku had ever been born. And villain attacks didn't tend to last very long either. Secondly, he had never actually been smack dab in the middle of a large scale battle before, only ever on the sidelines. The big exception being the sludge villain indecent. But, he also had a concussion at the time, so the massive pain he had felt in his head had been attributed to that.
Regardless, being in a chaotic mass melee of thirty some-odd people and gods know how many robots was making his quirk buzz so loud his head was starting to throb. It also had the nasty side effect of making all the buzzes mix together into one loud mess that was impossible to glean any sort of useful information from. As a result, he was having a bit of trouble helping people who needed helping. He'd only managed to stop two people from getting hurt so far. The only saving grace was that he could intrinsically distinguish when his quirk was warning about danger to him rather than anything else.
As if on cue, a buzz warned him to spin around and have Holding Out catch a missile fired by a Three-Pointer. Said missile was promptly thrown directly back into the robot's face, where it exploded in a noisy burst of pink smoke. Since the faux villain's weapons were meant to be used on examinees, they weren't all that powerful and as a result, the Three-Pointer wasn't actually destroyed by the missile.
Acting quickly, Izuku threw himself at the robot with Holding Out to finish it off. But before he actually reached it, the teen with the glasses swooped in again and took it out.
'Oh Come On! He has to be doing that on purpose!' Izuku mentally screamed. The guy had been giving him a hard time about interfering with the other examinees, and now he was actually trying to keep Izuku from getting points! What a jerk!
"FIVE MINUTES AND NINETEEN SECONDS LEFT!" Present Mic's voice rang out. Whether he was using a PA system or his quirk to make himself heard, Izuku couldn't tell. As much as he'd like to try to figure it out, now was sadly not the time.
Right now, he needed to hurry up and collect more points. Unfortunately, there weren't anymore faux villains left here. He'd need to head deeper into the city to find more. With any luck, the buzzing would get quieter too.
-000-
Ochako panted heavily as she ran down the street. She never would've considered herself to be out of shape, despite what some jerks at her school said, but she did realise that she was probably not as fit as was required for heroics. It'd probably be a good idea to start working out more. If only gym-memberships weren't so expensive. Running was free though, and also what was giving her such a hard time at the moment. Running, running, running, it was all she'd done since the exam started. Due to the way her quirk worked, this entire fight had just been her running up to a faux villain, slapping it, then running to another one. Well, that and dodging attacks, but that mostly consisted of, you guessed it, more running!
So yeah, as unappealing as it sounded at the moment, taking up running would definitely help Ochako in future combat exercises.
Assuming she passed the exam that is...
Twenty-eight points. Ochako only had twenty-eight points. Would that be enough? No, she was certain it wouldn't be.
She needed more points.
"FOUR MINUTES AND FORTY-NINE SECONDS LEFT!" Came an announcement, "IF YOU'RE WONDERING WHAT'S UP WITH THESE TIMES I'M CALLING OUT, I'M JUST RANDOMLY CHECKING MY WATCH AND YELLING OUT HOW MUCH LONGER YOU'VE GOT!"
Dammit, the exam was over halfway done! She wasn't going to pass at this rate. Hell, she wasn't sure she was even going to still be standing by the end at this rate. Her legs felt like jelly, and she felt exhausted. Not to mention that she was extremely close to puking out her guts.
But she couldn't give up.
Uraraka Ochako was going to be a hero. She needed to become one, for her parents and for herself. And to do that, she needed more points.
But there were no more faux villain left here. Maybe there's be more farther into the city. Steeling her nerves, she forced to her legs to start moving as she ran at top speed towards her goal.
-000-
Tenya's eyes swept across the battlefield. There were no more robots, not here at the very least. A disappointingly large amount of the examinees hadn't seemed to have noticed yet. If they wanted to be heroes, they needed better observational skills.
At forty-nine points, he was doing pretty well. But a true hero couldn't slack off, especially when there are unsavory characters around. Tenya spotted a head of green hair running off deeper into the city. He immediately moved to follow him.
Tenya had been watching him the entire exam to make sure he didn't pull anything like he had during the presentation or tried to pull with that girl. Additionally, there would probably be more faux villains farther ahead. It only made sense to go in the same direction as Midoriya.
With the boost from his quirk, catching up to the green-haired boy was a simple matter. In fact, he easily overtook the delinquent. As a result, Tenya reached a Three-Pointer that had lumbered into the street first. He jumped into the air and let his momentum carry him towards the machine at high speeds. Lashing out his leg at the last moment, Tenya delivered a powerful kick to the side of the machine that snapped its arm off. Unfortunately, the villain wasn't down. Hitting the robot had done a lot to slow Tenya down, so it was pretty easy to come to a stop and turn back around to face it. He ran back up to it, and delivered a roundhouse kick backed by the power of his quirk directly into the villain's face, completely destroying the robot.
'Fifty-two.' Tenya thought calmly. Turning around, he saw Midoriya staring at him with a sour look on his face, 'What? Is he upset that I destroyed the faux villain? Unbelievable!'
The nerve of that kid! First, he causes problems for everyone on purpose, and now he's unhappy that Tenya's giving the exam his all. Did he expect everyone to just stand by and let him do as he pleased!?
Suddenly, the world lurched.
Tenya almost lost his balance and fell. What on earth just happened?! It sounded like there had been an explosion of some sort. He turned around to see that a massive cloud of smoke and dust had been kicked up. Buildings near the explosion had been damaged and some were crumbling to the ground.
The smoke cleared. Standing far too close to him was an utterly massive robot. It was easily the size of a large office building. No bigger in fact, considering that it just placed one of its hands on top of one of the buildings near him and wrapped its fingers around the structure. The robot closed its hand, and crushed the building like it was made of sand.
He ran.
As chunks of concrete from the destroyed building rained down around him, Tenya pushed his quirk to its limits. He needed to get out of here! There's no way he could fight that thing!
'Th-this must be the Zero-Pointer we were warned about!' Tenya thought frantically as he ran.
He zoomed past Midoriya. Tenya barely even registered the other boy as he ran, fear had him firmly in its grip. The only thing he could think about was getting to safety.
-000-
As soon as Ochako ran into the street she saw another examinee kick a robot to death. Well, not to death, since it was never alive in the first place, but it stopped moving. It seemed that others had the same idea that she did.
Fortunately, there were only two other people here. That was way less than before. And she saw more faux villains this way. If she acted fast and didn't stop running, she might be able to snag some points.
That plan went down in flames the moment the area ahead went up in smoke.
It might've been because her legs were already so wobbly, but the explosion knocked her right on her ass. Ochako closed her eyes in pain and groaned as she forced herself back to her feet. When she opened them again, there was a giant robot in front of her.
No, that was an understatement. There was a massive F**king goliath of steel towering over the entire city. The hulking monstrosity reached out a hand and crushed a building like an empty water bottle.
The pain in her legs momentarily forgotten, she was about to get the hell out of there when she saw something. That boy from earlier, what was his name, Deku? He was standing far closer to the colossus than she was. In fact, he was standing right next to the building it destroyed. Her eyes widened in shock as pieces of the building fell into the street.
A chunk of concrete the size of her dad's truck was falling directly towards him.
Ochako ran. She ran at full sprint towards the green-haired boy.
-000-
Izuku glared at the boy with the glasses (It was probably closer to a pout, but Izuku preferred to think of it as glaring). This had to be intentional. He really was following Izuku around trying to make sure he didn't get points. Didn't that count as interfering or something? Wasn't that not allowed?
A buzz so loud it was almost deafening suddenly distracted him. That couldn't be good.
Understatement of the century, apparently. An explosion that put Kacchan's to shame rocked the street. However, there was no heat, and there didn't seem to be any actual smoke, just a lot of dust and whatnot. Meaning, it wasn't a bomb going off or anything.
The cause of the explosion quickly revealed itself. It was the Zero-Pointer bursting out of the ground. And holy hell! They did not say it was going to be that freaking big!
Izuku's quirk buzzed like mad to let him know he was way too close to it, a fact he was already WELL AWARE OF! And then it crushed the building he directly adjacent to. Because screw Izuku, I guess.
If he was feeling a little irritable today, he felt that was justified. Today hadn't been going well in the slightest so far. The only exception being that he was doing rather well in the exam (Until now at least), but basically everything else had been a complete shitshow.
Oh gods, now he was starting to sound like Kacchan. He needed to watch his language.
A buzz warned him that a giant slab of concrete was about to land on top of him. Now all he needed was a swift kick to the nuts and he'll have had a full day.
Looking up to see his imminent demise made fear replace any annoyance he felt. Holding Out desperately tried to stop the piece of debris, but it was too heavy. The moment his quirk caught it, its legs gave out and it fell to its knees. To make matters even worse, this made Izuku's own legs suddenly fail beneath him, and he fell to the ground.
Just as he was pushing himself back up, more debris landed on top of the chunk Holding Out was holding up, throwing off his balance again. The weight was quickly becoming far too much for Holding Out to manage, and his quirk was buzzing like mad.
He was going to die. Holding Out wouldn't be able to keep holding the debris up! It was going to crush him to death, and he couldn't even move because there was too much weight on Holding Out, and it felt like the same weight was on him, and he it was locking in place, and his was going to be crushed to death, and, and, and-
Izuku didn't know whether to be panicked, depressed, or resigned about his fate. Actually, he felt kind of angry. Because this was what killed him? After everything he's survived so far, he dies in a freaking exam!
Holding Out's strength almost failed. It nearly dropped the concrete, and caught it just as it was about to crush him. Laying flat on his stomach, face pressed against the asphalt of the street by the debris just above him, Izuku cried out in fear and frustration. His limbs struggled to move, and Holding Out tried in vain to keep the concrete from crushing him. He just had to last a little bit longer. He would make it if he kept this up, he'd either figure out a way to escape or help would arrive.
Suddenly, the weight disappeared. It wasn't completely gone, but the majority of the weight that had been trapping him, that had been about to crush him, was just gone.
Holding Out lifted the concrete up, and he looked up to see a hero standing in front of him.
"Give me your hand!" Uraraka yelled as she reached towards him. Izuku forced himself to his knees and grabbed her hand. She helped to pull him out from underneath the debris that Holding Out was keeping up. The moment he was clear, she steepled her fingers, "RELEASE!"
The weight on Holding Out immediately returned, and crushed his quirk flat into the ground. It didn't actually harm it in any way, but it did cause Izuku to fall over again.
"Come on, we need to get out of here." Uraraka said as she bent down to pick him up. She must have thought he couldn't stand since his just fell down. Izuku would've objected to being carried, but his mind was kind of short circuiting at the moment.
He just survived a life or death situation, so he felt was allowed to be a bit scatterbrained. Sadly, that really wasn't why he suddenly spaced out. It was because he was currently being carried by a cute and amazing girl!
"Y-you're awesome." Izuku said quietly with stars in his eyes and a blush on his face. Awesome actually felt like too weak a word. She just saved his life and was carrying him to safety. She must be really strong to lift him like he didn't weigh anything.
Wait... He didn't weigh anything right now. That must be her quirk! She can make things weightless, that would explain how she saved him.
"Don't mentio- Urmph!" Uraraka suddenly looked like she was about to throw up. But, she swallowed it back down and kept moving.
"Are you okay!? You can put me down! I'm fine!" Izuku yelled in concern. He shouldn't be forcing her to carry him, he could do that himself.
Before she could say anything, a loud alarm went off.
"THE EXAM IS OVER!" Present Mic yelled. The Zero-Pointer that was rampaging in the distance stopped moving completely.
With that, Uraraka promptly dropped Izuku. Or rather, she let go off him. He didn't actually drop, he just kind of floated in place. Uraraka went to press her fingers together, and his quirk buzzed to warn him that he was about to drop for real. Fortunately, he called out Holding Out to catch him before he could hit the ground.
"Are you okay?" Izuku asked, because she looked very green. She gave him a shaky thumbs up in response. Izuku hmm'd as he analysed the situation, "Are you worried you'll throw up if you try to talk?"
She gave a single nod.
"Thank you for saving me. I-I owe you my life." Izuku said with bow, "You were amazing. You're going to be a great hero!"
"Th-thanks." Uraraka said shakily, evidently feeling better now, "I hope I get in."
"What? Of course you'll get in!" Izuku was shocked that she would doubt her chances after that.
"I only got twenty-eight points. You think that's enough to pass?" She asked.
"Uh... Well, if you did really well on the written potion-" Izuku was cut off by a groan as Uraraka hung her head in defeat, "H-hey! Don't give up! I know, I'll talk with Present Mic about it!"
"What, do have connections to the school or something?" Uraraka joked humorlessly.
"That's not quite what I meant." Izuku said. Though he could always talk to All Might... No. It wouldn't be right to ask Yagi-san to abuse his power like that. But she's clearly hero material, so getting him to flex his authority as Number One might be justified here... Okay, he was stopping this line of thinking here before it lead to anything unsavory, "Heroes save people, so what you did has to count for something. Maybe I could get them to give you extra points. Or- or if that doesn't work, maybe I could give you some of my points!" Izuku said, desperately trying to think of a way to help her out.
"What! You can't give me your points! You need those to-"
"Oh my goodness! Look! It's Recovery Girl!" Izuku suddenly cut her off to point out the small figure of the Youthful Heroine as she approached some other examinees to check them for injuries, "She's considered to be one of the greatest doctors in all of Japan. Her quirk is second to none when it comes to healing. Actually, she helped operate on me after the sludge villain incident, and she 100% deserves her reputation."
Recovery Girl walked up to the two of them, and Izuku shook from excitement, "You two both went through quite a scare. How are you holding up?"
"Thank you so much for helping me before!" Izuku bowed rapidly to the elderly hero. In his excitement, it took him half a moment to register her question, "Oh, right! I'm fine. I've been through worse."
"Yes... I'm aware." Recovery Girl said in a clipped voice, "You're sure you're not hurt? Your quirk isn't buzzing?"
"You know what my quirk is?" Izuku asked, genuinely amazed that she knew that about him.
"Yes well, you're friends with one of my regular patients. Toshinori talks about you a lot." Recovery girl said, "And you didn't answer my question."
"Oh, sorry. No, there's no buzzing." Izuku blushed with embarrassment.
"That's good. What about you deary? You're looking a little green around the gills." Recovery girl turned to Uraraka, who had been watching in their exchange in confusion.
"Huh! Oh, I'm just a little nauseous. It happens when I use my quirk a lot." Uraraka explained, "All the running didn't help either."
"I see. Are you allergic to anything?" Recovery girl asked. Uraraka shook her head, and the Youthful Heroine handed her some kind of medicine, "Here, this should help settle your stomach. Also, here have some candy, both of you. Though, I recommend not eating yours until later, young lady." She said as she handed them both some gummies. Then she went off to check on the other examinees.
-000-
As Recovery Girl walked away from the duo, Tenya watched Midoriya and the girl chat. He ground his teeth together in frustration.
That girl had saved Midoriya. She ran into danger to save him. While he just ran away.
'If it hadn't been an exam, of course I would've-' He could even bring himself to finish that thought. He knew it wasn't true. He had been afraid, terrified even, when he ran. It didn't matter that it was only an exam, the fear that made him run like a coward had been very real.
And to think that he had been determined to show everyone what a true hero was, when he acted nothing like the sort. And after all the flack he had given Midoriya too.
This exam did more than just test their combat abilities. It was designed to see who here were true heroes, and he failed.
Bakugou: I have the most outrageously delusional ideas about Deku!
Iida: *Pushes up glasses to produce white anime spectacles*
You would not believe how many times I misspelled Uraraka's name while writing this. Usually, I would up leaving off the last "A", resulting in her name being Urarak.
Hopefully, the situation that Izuku needed saving from didn't come off as stupid of contrived. It was actually really hard to think of a way to threaten Izuku considering his Stand power.
I think the reason I finished this chapter so quickly is because it's mostly just one big action scene. I find action far easier to write than other things, such as dialogue.