"My name's Shindo!" the black-haired boy in Joke's class said while grabbing Midoriya's hands, "UA's had it tough this year, right? The hits just keep coming." Since Midoriya was near Todoroki, I begged Shindo wouldn't see me. He moved from person to person, shaking each of their hands and commenting on their heroism. "But you still have your hearts set on becoming heroes. That's awesome! I believe the heroes of tomorrow need to have that kind of fortitude!" Something was off about this dude. You come to an exam that only half of all people pass and you start encouraging your competition and comment on their intrepidness? It seemed odd, but some people are sometimes just like that. If Joke had so much seriousness when introducing her class, why show off such a softie.
Shindo finally came to Bakugou's hand. "Best of all, here's Bakugou, who was at the heart of the whole Kamino mess!" I swear if anyone brings that up again… "You've got the strongest will of all! I'm so glad we get a chance to face guys of your caliber today. We're going to give it our best!" I turned around right in time to see Bakugou swat away Shindo's hand with disgust.
"Cut the crap," Bakugou said. "You can talk all you want, but your face says otherwise." So Bakugou noticed too… Some of Class 1-A reprimanded Bakugou for his rude behavior, but I saw nothing wrong with the way he acted. Shindo was a fake, and he was good at it.
Some of the students socialized while I continued to hide from Joke until Aizawa barked at us to put on our costumes. Jirou and Kaminari made some remarks about everyone knowing them and I realized something. Even all the way in the bar, we were watching the sports festival. How many of these kids had watched it—studied it—in order to prepare for UA? After avoiding Joke and heading with the rest of the class, I approached Midoriya. He seemed to be deep in thought.
"Hey," I nudged him.
"O-oh, Asuga!"
"Am I the only one worried about the sports festival?"
"What do you mean?"
"How many of the people here do you think watched that?"
"Practically all of them. That is my largest worry so far."
"So we are on the same wavelength. I'll try my best to offset the odds for you guys… but this won't be a fair match at all."
"In the real hero world, plenty of people will already know our abilities and weaknesses. We need to be able to survive and grow stronger against even those odds! If they think we haven't grown from the sports festival, then they're already giving us an advantage."
"I'm glad to see you have faith in your class!"
"Our class." He corrected me. "And, yes, I am confident every person in our class will make it. After all, if half the contestants can pass, it shouldn't de difficult at all!"
He's not wrong. Well, that was true until we figured out how the exam would really work. "Only the first one hundred examinees to meet the requirements will pass." Th-that is less than a .07% chance of passing! They aren't joking around this year…
The announcer explained how the exam would work with the targets an everything. Suddenly, the room we were in… opened up. The wall disconnected and opened to reveal a stadium with a mountain, city, forest, and many other regions. I was getting bad memories of the USJ.
When I got the targets, I placed the first two on my left and right bicep. I placed the third right in the center of my chest. All of them were visible, but only if you were facing right at me. I wanted all of them to say "Come at me head-on. I dare you."
Midoriya explained to the class why we would be school vs. school instead of everyone for themselves and that was why we should stick together. Bakugou, Todoroki, and Kirishima left for their own reasons. There was no time to argue and Todoroki and Bakugou's quirks wouldn't be good at such a close distance with our classmates. Bakugou didn't express he knew that fact and acted like he didn't want to be stuck with us, but I think he knew that all he was going to do was hurt the class if he went all out. I knew why Midoriya was afraid they wouldn't be alright not their own, but Bakugou and Todoroki were some of the strongest people in the class and no doubt some of the strongest on this whole exam. I was confident in their abilities.
Midoriya expained to the class about the "UA hunting" but it was too late. "We need to get to higher ground!" I yelled. The exam started and students emerged from their hiding places. Hundreds of them all with their sights set on us.
"I got the first wave!" I yelled and Switched all of the balls that were within a few meters back at the people who sent them and with the same velocity with which they had been thrown with which stopped a few of the next wave from coming right at us. I backed down after that and let the rest of the class handle the next few waves. I had been debating two options on how to play this exam for a while. The first option was to help out UA as much as possible and aid others in getting two participants. The second was to go on my own track and just pass on my own. My quirk made this exam easy to pass. There's no point in sneaking up on people if you can just teleport right in front of their target and hit it.
Then I thought about Midoriya's comment. "We need to be able to survive and grow stronger against even those odds!" If I helped class 1-A, then they wouldn't be growing; they'd be getting a free ride to their provisional license. After taking that into account, I decided.
"Here," I place four of my balls on the ground and took the remaining two. "You guys will need these more than me." I held one ball in my right, and the other in my left.
"Kirika? What are you doing?" Mina asked with a small amount of horror.
"I'm gonna take out some of the competition! I'll see you guys one you finish!" I ran out of or UA huddle and into the flying debris. This was my debut. If anything was going to show the rest of the world—and Aizawa especially—that I was fit to be a hero, it was being the first to pass this exam.
I picked out my first target. A scrawny boy who was cowering behind a rock. Judging from his long nails, button nose, and large cat ears, he has a feline-based quirk. Which means that he couldn't give me any immediate surprises. I located all three of his targets: one on his thigh, his shoulder, and his arm. I switched in front of them and tapped the three before he could even react.
"HOLY CRA— Awww man!" He put his hands down at his sides in defeat. "This is my second year trying!" Shrugged and continued moving.
My next target was a small girl who didn't have any sort of features that showed off her quirk other than her purple skin. She was out in the open with her eyes darting from side to side as if she was looking for her classmates. She was practically begging for someone to attack her. Her targets were all grouped together on her stomach in a triangle. I switched in front of her and quickly got two of her targets and went for the third until gas suddenly came out of her hands. I backed away and coughed response. It was purple, like her skin, and spreading rapidly.
"Ha! You fell right for our trap! You think I was really dumb enough to be so obvious?" I watched the girl fade away into the purple. "This gas will slowly dull all of your senses to the point where you can't see, hear, smell, taste, or feel a thing!" I flailed my arms to try and fan away the gas, but more just came into its place. "Trying to fight back will only make it worse." The girl's voice sounded a bit more distant.
Thinking was hard. Eventually, I fell to the ground and my balls rolled into the purple fog. I had to think of something, and soon. I just lied there until the girl approached me. Her figure appeared and crouched right in front of me. "You poor thing. Thought you had the advantage with a fancy teleportation quirk, huh?" She pulled out a round object from her pocket and began making her way to the target on my chest.
"N-no…" I breathed.
"It's okay. I'll disperse the gas when I'm done with you."
"I meant…"
"Hmm?"
I launched from the ground and kicked the girl in the shoulder. "I meant: no way!" She got up quicker than I could land another blow. My sight wavered and she punched me in the stomach.
"How are you still moving?!" She grit her teeth. I couldn't risk breathing more of the gas in so I switched behind her swept her feet, grabbed one of her balls, and quickly touched it to her third target.
"UUGHH!" She seemed infuriated. I could care less and quickly ran out of the cloud of purple fog. As soon as the air was clear, I coughed out whatever was in my lungs. I lasted about three minutes without a breath. I'm out of practice. Mustard taught me a thing or two about fighting when you have limited time to spare. My record time without a breath was seven minutes and fourteen seconds.
I stood to my full height when they made the announcement. "Alright. Our first examinee has passed. Ninety-nine more places left and two examinees eliminated." He could've sounded more impressed or energetic, but oh well.
The targets on my body lit up and told me to head towards the reception room. Before I would do that, I located where Aizawa was in the crowd and raised a fist to him as if to say, "I made it, and I'll do it again." I zoomed my scope in on him and watched him shake his head. From my point of view, I could see Joke sitting with Aizawa and suddenly start up a conversation with him while looking back at me every so often. She then pulled out a folded piece of paper from her pocket. She pointed to the writing, then back at me, then back at the writing. It took me a second to realize what the paper was.
Joke had kept my letter from the alley all this time.
~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~
Yay! I know some of you are probably like "Asuga gets first in the exam? Yeah, right. That's just character bias!" And, honestly, it isn't. Asuga has a legit teleportation-based quirk! And the objective is to hit people's targets and therefore catching them off guard to hit them. Asuga's quirk is literally the best quirk to have in this situation! So it's not bias, just facts.
Peace!