I look around, 'there must be at least three hundred people in this sector alone. There are people with mutations, there are people with strange devices, one purple-haired kid seems to be about to grope that cute girl, honestly, aren't you here to become a hero.' I think to myself as I look around before marching over to the kid.
"What do you think you're doing shortie?" I grit loudly, attracting attention, especially from the poor unsuspecting girl.
The kid is caught off guard, he doesn't even move, sadly for him, that includes not lowering his hands which are hovering above the girls' thighs.
"Ahh, Get away from me you creep!" She shouts before kicking him, he flies over a few heads, bouncing as he lands. No one bothers to give any assistance other than checking he's still breathing.
"Thanks for the help." the girl thanks me with a smile.
"No prob..." I start but the sound of the two big steel doors opening interrupts me.
A few moments pass before we hear the crackle of the loudspeaker. Looking to the tower there appears to be a man with long black hair covering his face speaking into the mic.
"Welcome to the practical side of the exam, you have 10 minutes," he says drowsily.
Everyone just stands around, 'Wait are we meant to take initiative?' I think before bolting into the small city, if we aren't meant to they probably won't kick me out.
I'm quick to run to the entrance when I hear the man telling us it had already started, lucky me. Once inside I turn left straight away and run past a few robots giving them brief touches and as a small light emitted from my hand appears they collapse. I would try to do more with them but I want to put as much distance between me and the crowd and do not have time to waste.
Two minutes pass of me running putting space I don't have anyone behind me and have already collected 32 points. I run to the closest three-point robot while collecting purple wave of energy in my hands, I run around the robot and jump on it's back slamming the energy into it, with so much energy I can instantly create a connection, the first thing I do is remove all limiters on the robot before and then change the code to avoid all contestants and destroy all robots, I let the Lil guy go and it rockets away, continuing on the direction I was previously heading, next thing I do is hunt after some 1 pointers, a lot more common. I manage to make five of the 1 point robots connected to cameras to look for other candidates and help rescue them.
"Now that I think about it isn't there meant to be a huge robot for the last minute, maybe I should head over there to disable it?" I talk out loud
This exam is too easy if you know what you need to do to pass, honestly, when I woke with Technomancy I thought I was going to just have to rely on my written scores and make it into the general course but when I took a sneak peek at the practical and found it was robots I couldn't stop myself from laughing, mum thought I'd gone loony. I wonder what they do for applicants with mind powers or quirks that affect living things, they will probably lose a few good hero candidates since they rush the exams like this, can't say it isn't efficient though.
By the time I reach the centre of the city there are only two minutes left for the exam and I have personally defeated around sixty points worth of robots, run into and helped an invisible girl to the off switch on a couple of robots and eaten a muesli bar.
'I probably should stop defeating robots, give someone else a chance.' I think, knowing full well the average points gathered from defeating robots is 18 for a pass.
For the next minute, while I wait for the robot I munch on a couple of snacks I have stuffed into my pocket whilst charging up power, it starts off flowing from my hands like water before slowly growing up my arms, I can feel myself connecting to the phone in my pocket, to the camera on the building above me.
When the zero point robot is finally lifted into the city it doesn't have any time to so much as move when I run-up to it and slam my palms onto its foot. The purple flowing energy is redirected into the titanic robot, spreading through its innards until it reaches in processing chip and memory.
Everyone watches in suspense as the hulking robot remains stationary for a few moments, it's eyes slowly turn purple. It lowers its hand flat to the ground.
"Thank you Sebas," I say before climbing onto the giant hand
/Of course, Sir/ The robot responds while lifting me into the air for a better view, seeing all those shocked faces is why I do what I do.
"Hey Sebas, how you liking the body?"
/Although better than a simple phone or computer I feel that it is too large and impractical to be of use to you Sir.''
"Yea I just wish I could get a power that would allow me to make cyborgs or something, I finished you two years ago and still haven't gotten any of the right powers" I whisper bitterly.
My quirk is quite rare, and by rare I mean that I'm the only person recorded to have anything like it, Every time I go to sleep for more than an hour then wake up I have a different quirk also I will always know what it is and how to use it. Sebas was the culmination of 5 years of work and dozens of different quirks from increased intelligence to Empathy. I had refused to boot him up without being absolutely perfect, and when I finally manage to get him a body there will be almost no difference between him and a human.
It wasn't long before the alarm sounded, signalling the end of the exam, Sebas let me down and returned to my phone and I disconnected from any robots, thus giving them back to UA. On the way out the door, everyone was checked by a school nurse, since I wasn't so much as scratched I was allowed to walk out.
Having nothing else to do I decided to go to the arcade. Musutafu truly is an awesome city, not only does it have the best Hero school in Japan, it's entertainment industries are always upgrading their games and equipment to the newest advancements.
"Oh sweet, they have the new DDR," I shout as I spot the massive machines in the middle of the building.
Since the UA exams have just finished there are no kids my age in the building yet, and it just so happens that one of the five machines are free.
Inserting some coin into the slot I choose a song called 'The Beginning', from a popular anime 'Worlds End', it's not bad but I prefer anime from the twenty through the twenty-second century. Nowadays it's almost a written rule that an MC can't be either a vigilante or villain and villains can't win and the Hero can't die. It's just stupid and unrealistic, Worlds End is praised for it not conforming to the norms but it's pretty tame compared to classics like Death Note, Overlord and hell even that drawn-out Naruto had a bunch of emotional character deaths.
The music begins and I do my best to follow the character, the great thing about the newer DDR is that it has full-body tracking and adjustment for mutant quirks, some songs have flips and others head-spins, getting a warmup from the first song I decide to pick a more popular song and give it a try on EXXtreme difficulty.
My entire life I had been training for this moment, well not specifically to dance to this song but I'd done everything from yoga to street fighting, being able to dance is just a fun side product of my training.
After the three minutes of fun, I finish with a Three-sixty backflip landing in a crouch when I hear someone applauding.
"That was awesome! I've never seen someone else finish an EXXtreme difficulty song in person." She applauds.
"Umm, Thanks?" I respond as I enter [Crimson Cat] as my name for 9th highest score, just below Alien Queen.
"Wait, aren't you the guy that took down that massive zero pointer before it could do anything!"
"Yeah... Sorry did you want a turn?" I try to divert her attention elsewhere.
"Huh? Oh definitely, want to pick a song for me, I've already set high scores for all the popular ones."
I take a moment to think of a song, "Give 'Do you Love Me' by Kakeru a shot, it's an Extreme difficulty."
Picking the song which was choreographed and uploaded by [Crimson Cat] along with holding all 10 top scores, she gives me a knowing smirk.
"Just start already, I want another go," I tell her, feeling my cheeks heating a little.
She turns around and starts to copy the figure on the screen, It's a little out of tune at first but as a tribute to her skills she quickly adapts. She seems to be very flexible and more than fit enough to keep up with the fast tempo. I try to think back to the prac exam but I can't remember any cute pink girls with horns... 'No no, stop that' I shake the thoughts out of my head
Almost four minutes pass of watching her dance, four agonising minutes of watching the sweat form on her body, her long slender but slightly muscled arms and legs flow around her body. I would have left but I chose the song and it felt rude to just ditch.
"Aww, so close, only a few more perfects and I would have gotten on the scoreboard."
"Y-Yeah, that was really impressive. It normally takes me a few tries to get a dance down." I tell her as I look at the select screen since the heat in my face wasn't going anywhere.
"So do you think you passed, I mean you took out that huge robot in seconds so you must have some kind of amazing quirk."
I pause in my search, 'Should I try to get to know some people around here?' I consider, 'I have not bothered making a real fiend in like five years, now that I'm going to be in one place for a while maybe I should actually try'
"I think my chance of getting accepted is almost certain, I got quite a few points in the prac and I've always been able to get 96% or more for the theoretical stuff," I say as nonchalant as I can.
"EEE really? I'm so nervous, I've never been good at studying so even though I got like forty points I probably failed the written, I came here to clear my head since nothing gets rid of the nerves better than a little fun."
"Holy crap how are you so cute" I mumble into my hand.
"Hmm what was that?"
"I-Ahh said that I can check your score, if you want." I quickly made something up.
For a moment she had a shocked look of realisation, she wouldn't have to wait and could end the suspense.
"Oh my god really!" She shouts in excitement. "Can you like super hack and find out, wait no that's bad, Aww but..." She goes back and forth between what's right and wrong.
"Hey let's go play some Skee Ball, we're holding up the line." I indicate to the two people who have probably also just come from the exams.
"Oh sorry" She apologises to the two teens before dragging me to the Skee Ball machines.
"Bet ya I can beat you" She declares.
"Pfft, in your dreams pinky."
-=7 Games Later=-
"Hacks, I call hacks, you're using your quirk aren't you."
"Mwahaha, no tricks required, just pure skill"
/Sir, I have acquired access to the files you wanted./ Sebas interrupts from my pocket.
"Oooh, what's that?"
"This if my friend Sebas Tian, He's a butler AI that I made and I got him to retrieve your test results."
"That's soo cool" She shouts with stars in her eyes, "and kinda creepy, I haven't even introduced myself yet." She subconsciously takes a step backwards,
"Nah, it's less creepy than it sounds, he probably just looked over all the applicants' school photos which are attached to each test, there can't be many pink girls with horns. So do you want to find out if you passed or not."
"Wait, that's totally Illegal, we are meant to be heroes you can't just go around hacking into everything... Well, there might be a few places."
"Nah, it's just a percentile result which will be public in like a week or two, If I wanted to know things like your quirk or change results I doubt I could do it, or at least not this quick, Your name is Ashido Mina, right? And you got a..."
"No! Don't tell me." She places her hand over my mouth and clicks the off button on my phone. "I'll get a letter in the mail soon, I want to find out with my parents."
"Oh ok, that's cool. Sebas, delete her file from my phone please."
/Already done Sir./ His voice sounds from the speaker.
Ashido rubs the back of her head in embarrassment after letting me go, "Thanks umm... Wait I never got your name."
"Hayase Kazumi, I prefer Kazumi or Kass but will go by whatever," I tell her with a smile.
"Well thanks, Kass, for not telling me. I've got to head home soon, want to meet up another time, today was fun."
The thought 'Wow was it that easy?' passes through my head.
"Yeah absolutely," I tell her and we swap numbers.
Before leaving we stopped to exchange out tickets at the prize counter, Mina got some lollies and a yo-yo while I had just enough tickets to get a small tiger plushie.
"Aww that's adorable" She cooed seeing the prize I chose.
"It's not for me, it's for my cat Lucifer, She loves cuddling up with stuffed animals," I respond defensively
"Aww, that's even cuter!" She grabs my neck with a one-armed hug.
"A-anyways, it's getting late, we should probably get home, and I need to feed Lucifer." I wriggle out of her grip with hot cheeks.
"Okey-dokey Kass, See you at school if we don't have time to meet up."
"I'll hold you to it."
I watch as she walks in the opposite direction of the train station thinking about the score she got that I glimpsed at. 'Yeah, see you at school'
The rest of the day I couldn't stop smiling, even my demonic cat Lucifer became as happy as me after receiving her gift. Today we both had a new friend.