Chapter 03: Aizawa's Test
When Izumi had received the letter of acceptance from none other than All-Might himself, she was ecstatic. Even more so when it was revealed she managed to get the top score on the entire exam. She was even more overjoyed to learn that her friends had all managed to pass as well and would be in the same class together.
It was now the first day of school and Izumi was running around the hallways to find the class she was assigned to, 1-A. As she looked around for any signs of the number, she suddenly bumped into somebody and fell on top of them.
"Gomen! I'm so sorry!" Izumi apologized, bowing her head over and over before noticing the person she ran into was the boy with black hair from the Entrance Exam.
"I-It's okay. I-I was lost, anyway. Are you also looking for Class 1-A?"
Izumi got off the boy and helped him to his feet. "Yes. I don't think we've been properly introduced though. I'm Izumi Midoriya."
"Mikumo...Akatani Mikumo. Y-You helped me out with that guy back at the Entrance Exam."
"I know. He was pretty rude to make assumptions of you like that. You seem like a nice person."
Akatani blushed as he and Izumi walked together, talking about a few small things from the exam before finally finding Class 1-A, the giant door with the red '1-A' painted on it being an obvious dead giveaway.
"Man, that's a pretty big door..."
"Probably those for Giant Mutations and whatnot," Izumi said as the two went inside. Izumi beamed when she saw Katsumi, Ochako, Momo, and Melissa were all there already.
Momo Yaoyorozu was a beautiful girl with black hair tied in a spikey ponytail and onyx eyes. She had a mature and refined air about her due to her wealthy upbringing but Izumi had known her long enough to know she was actually a total sweetheart.
As for Melissa Shield, she was also an attractive young woman with long blonde hair, sky blue eyes, and a pair of oval-framed glasses. Despite hailing from America on I-Island, she was on UA's Recommendation List on a Scholarship deal.
"Izu-Chan! You made it!" Ochako said happily as the verdette grinned as the rest of her friends noticed her and smiled as well.
"Knew you'd make it in, Deku!" Katsumi chuckled as Izumi and Akatani looked to see most of their class was already there. From the looks of things, they were the last two to arrive.
"Do you guys know where our teacher is, though?" Melissa asked with a finger to her chin.
"It does seem quite strange. Though I expect he's close by." Momo said before the sound of ruffling was heard. The entire class turned their gaze to the corner and saw what looked like a giant yellow caterpillar laying on the ground. However, when it turned around, it was revealed to be a man with messy black hair, scruff, and sleep-deprived red eyes in a sleeping bag.
"It seriously took you 8 seconds to be quiet? You brats.. life is short you know. I'm your Homeroom Teacher; Shota Aizawa. A pleasure to meet you." he introduced, his blank and tired expression not really matching his words.
"How long had he been there?" Most of the class thought as the teacher unzipped his sleeping bag slightly and threw out a bundle of gym clothes at them.
"Put those on, then get to the P.E Grounds."
After the entire class had put on their gym uniforms, they headed to the PE Grounds, which were far bigger than what most schools had. As the class assembled, Aizawa was already waiting with a bored look on his face.
"We'll be having a Quirk Apprehension Test."
"Isn't that kind of soon?" Ochako asked with her hand raised. "What about Orientation?"
"Heroes don't have time for niceties like that, though I suppose we can do it later if you all survive," Aizawa answered ominously. "UA is famed for granting students a large range of freedoms, but those freedoms extend to us teachers too."
"Scary..." Most of the class thought with a shiver.
Aizawa stepped forward and fiddled with a PDA-like device, which projected a scoreboard onto the side of a wall. The class's names were listed by their seat number and there were nine columns beside their names, each headed with the name of a certain physical activity with the final column being marked "Total".
"Softball Pitch, Standing Long Jump, 50 Meter Dash, Endurance Running, Grip Strength, Sideways Jumps, Pull-Ups, and Sit-Ups; eight activities you all know from Middle School, but naturally, you were forbidden from using your Quirks." Aizawa explained, turning his attention to Izumi; "Midoriya, what was your middle school record for the Softball Pitch?"
"U-Um...51 meters, I think?"
Aizawa tossed a softball to Izumi, who caught it easily and noted the strange device built into it. "Try using your Quirk. So long as you don't leave the circle, everything you do is fine."
"O-Okay..." Izumi said, feeling a little shy at the attention being on her as she stepped into the pitching circle before taking a deep breath to calm her nerves. She then took a pitching stance and closed her eyes.
Before everyone's eyes, the verdette began emitting steam from her entire body. Her muscles tensed as her grip around the ball tightened. She then opened her eyes, a fiercely determined expression on them before throwing with all her might, the ball flying off into the distance like a bullet, a trail of blistering steam trailing behind it.
Izumi took a deep breath as the ball vanished over the horizon, the steam she was emitting dissipating as she bent down on her knees to regain her composition. Aizawa held up the PDA, which had a record of 813.3 meters, which was added to the appropriate part of the holographic score table.
"Before we can teach you, we need to know where you are in regards to your quirk, both in power and ingenuity. This test will establish the Foundation of your Hero Skills, and from there, we can build on them."
"Whoa, over 800 meters!? That's unreal!" a red-haired boy with shark-like teeth exclaimed.
"This is gonna be so fun!" Cheered a pink-skinned girl with fluffy light pink hair, horns, and black eyes with amber irises.
"Ah, it looks like fun you say?" Aizawa began quietly, sending a chill up the class's spines with how cold his voice was, "So you thought you'd spend the next three years having fun?
Aizawa began approaching the pink-skinned girl, having already singled her out. If looks could kill, she would have been dead and buried ten times over.
"Being a hero isn't about having fun, Ashido. How many likes you get on your newest post doesn't matter and the number of followers you have doesn't matter when you are staring a villain dead in the face. And if you think you can be a hero and get by with just your charm, then you are certainly not meant to be here."
"I-I'm sorry..."
"You're sorry?" Aizawa spat the word like it was poison. "Tell that to the man whose wife you failed to save because you were too busy making sure you looked perfect for the cameras. Tell that to a child who has to grow up without a parent because you were too busy with your ego. Tell me, Ashido, are you prepared to have that conversation?"
The girl, Mina Ashido's eyes were wide with fear, tears pricked up in the corners as Aizawa's glowing red eyes bore into her soul. However, it was at that moment, Izumi stepped in.
"That's enough!" The verdette said. She was not normally a violent or confrontational person, but when someone was being harassed, she refused to stand by and let it just happen.
"M-Midoriya..." Mina whimpered as Izumi glared unafraid at Aizawa as she stood protectively in front of Mina.
"You're supposed to be our teacher. What gives you the right to just antagonize your own students like that? Sure being a Hero isn't all fun and games, I know that more than anyone, but if you think you can just bully your students simply because they have optimism? Then why are you a teacher?!"
Aizawa was silent as Izumi glared at him with a protective fury as if Mother Nature herself had been angered and was now staring him dead in the eye with the promise of making sure he backed off or else there would be consequences.
"Well spoken, Midoriya." The teacher then backed off as Mina collapsed against the red-haired boy, Eijirou Kirishima, who comforted her as she wept.
"Man, she's so cool...standing up to our teacher like that." Said a boy with orange-yellow hair that had a black lightning bolt streak running through it.
"Indeed. It was as if Mother Nature herself manifested in her soul to speak up in a fellow student's defense." Concurred a boy with the head of a raven.
After the whole debacle with Aizawa had died down, the Quirk Apprehension Trials began in earnest.
The first trial was the 50-Meter Dash, and while each dash had two participants, they were really racing against the whole class. In that time, Izumi took to analyzing each of her new classmates and their capabilities.
The flamboyant French blonde boy she met in the Entrance Exam, Yuuga Aoyama, scored 5.51 seconds with his Quirk, [Navel Laser]. He simply turned around and used the laser from his belly button to propel himself across but paused midway to recharge before doing so again.
Mina, the girl Izumi had defended from Aizawa, managed 5.46 seconds by using white acid she secreted from her hands and feet to skate across the ground. A Frog-like girl named Tsuyu Asui was able to clear the track in 4.58 seconds with frog-like leaps, while Tenya Iida, the boy who she stopped from harassing Akatani back in the Entrance Exam, was able to use his amazing [Engine] Quirk to clear the track in 3.04 seconds.
Ochako simply used the gravity part of her power to make herself light enough to run across the track at near-super speeds, gaining 3.69 seconds. Melissa grinned as she glowed with golden energy thanks to her Quirk, [Cosmo], and in the blink of an eye, appeared at the end of the track, getting 0.23 seconds.
Momo used her powerful [Creation] Quirk to manifest a foldable electric scooter from her stomach, which she unfolded and rode across the track with, getting 3.77 seconds. Katsumi exploded across the track, clearing it in 4.13 seconds while a boy with half-white and half-red hair and a scar around his left eye named Shoto Todoroki skated across the track on a trail of ice he created from his right hand, getting 5.23 seconds.
When it came to be Izumi's turn, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath as she calmly spoke to herself.
"Combining Light, Air, and Electricity, I harness the element of...AURORA!"
Covered in a beautiful aurora, Izumi suddenly flew across the track like a trail of paint elegantly being put on paper by brush. She stopped when she reached the end of the track and the robot recording her beeped and made its score announcement.
"3.01 seconds!"
"Whoa, that was like Fantasia-level shit or something!" The orange-yellow-haired boy, Denki Kaminari, exclaimed. The rest of the class all muttered in agreement as Izumi blushed shyly at the praise.
Meanwhile, Akatani had somehow managed to grow engines from his shoulders similar to the ones Tenya had and used them to propel himself across for 3.06 seconds. He grunted as the engines retracted back into his body, looking visibly uncomfortable at the process behind it.
The second trial; Grip Strength, ended in an unquestioning victory for a multi-armed boy named Mezo Shoji, who was able to call on gorilla-like strength with his multiple arms. Second went to a buff boy with big lips named Rikidou Sato, who used some sugar to boost his strength and get a fairly super score.
Izumi coated her arm in a gauntlet of stone and managed to get the third highest score behind the two boys. Momo had created an industrial-grade clamp to get the job done for her while Melissa had coated her arm in a golden light exoskeleton to increase her own personal strength and Ochako did something similar by increasing the gravitational force of her grip on the device until it almost broke from the pressure.
Finally, Akatani surprised everyone by growing extra arms like Shouji to get a similar score to him. This got Izumi's mind pondering if the black-haired young man had some form of Copy Quirk, though considering the engines he used based on Tenya's came from his shoulders, she figured he could also edit the Quirks he copied.
"I'll have to talk with him after this is over."
The third trial; Standing Long Jump, had a lot of super results. Izumi simply flew on gusts of wind from her feet. Yuuga shot himself over with his laser, Tsuyu leaped over easily, Ochako was able to float herself across, and Rikidou bounded across with sugar empowering his legs.
A boy with straight square teeth named Hanta Sero was able to shoot tape from his dispenser-shaped elbows to pull himself across without touching the ground, Katsumi used her explosions to propel herself across, and a short boy named Minoru Mineta created a bundle of his bouncy hairballs to shoot himself across.
Melissa once more coated herself in a golden aura before flying across the sandbox while Momo created Spring Boots that she applied to her feet so she could bounce over. Finally, Akatani levitated across the track as if it was the most casual thing in the world.
The fourth trial; Repeated Side Steps was… unusual. Because of the limits, most people got only a normal score, though people like Izumi and Katsumi, who could shoot things from their hands were able to get superhuman scores, though funnily enough, it was Minoru who scored the highest by bouncing himself between two piles of his balls.
The Fifth trial was the Softball Pitch, which Izumi had already completed. Ochako proved the winner by using her gravity power to send the ball into outer space, earning a score of Infinity. Katsumi released an explosion at the apex of her pitch, gaining a distance of 705.2 meters. Momo created a large cannon that she shot her ball out of, earning a score of nearly 1000 meters.
Melissa channeled cosmic energy through her ball and fired it from her hand like a bullet from a gun, earning 692.5 meters. When Akatani came up to pitch, he took a stance similar to what Izumi did earlier and began speaking to himself.
"[Heat Force], [EM Field], [Euphoric Adrenaline]...ACTIVATE!"
The raven-haired boy's body began emitting sparks of electricity mixed with bursts of heat before he began spinning in place, building up energy, and just at the apex of his throw, he shouted;
"[CONVERSION]!"
The ball went flying with a burst of kinetic force as the class watched it soar into the distance. Aizawa checked the PDA and presented it to show Akatani got a good score of 730.9 meters.
"Man, that was pretty impressive!" Rikidou said.
"Did he just use multiple Quirks at the same time? Uncanny!" Eijirou exclaimed in excitement.
"So he can also use multiple Quirks at once? Just what are you, Mikumo-Kun?" Izumi thought to herself.
"That guy's pretty damn serious. I'll have to up my ante around him. And if he tries copying my Quirk next, let him. He won't be as good as it as me." Katsumi thought with her arms folded.
"I feel as though I know that boy from somewhere..." Melissa thought with a troubled expression.
The last three trials were rather uninteresting, as despite the Quirks on show, they all came down to endurance and that was something that only a few of them had a lot of. The Endurance Run went to Momo and Melissa, who used their created scooter and cosmic superspeed respectively. As for Pull-Ups, Izumi won that trial by simply gripping the bar and flying up and down with boosts of wind. Sit-Ups was… kind of disappointing. It was the last trial, so most people were already spent and even Izumi, Melissa, and Ochako were running low on energy.
Without a word, Aizawa input the last of the results into his PDA, and the scoreboard rearranged itself to reflect the positions of the students.
1st: Izumi Midoriya
2nd: Melissa Shield
3rd: Ochako Uraraka
4th: Akatani Mikumo
5th: Momo Yaoyorozu
6th: Shoto Todoroki
7th: Katsumi Bakugou
8th: Tenya Iida
9th: Fumikage Tokoyami
10th: Mezo Shouji
11th: Eijirou Kirishima
12th: Mina Ashido
13th: Kouji Kouda
14th: Rikidou Sato
15th: Tsuyu Asui
16th: Yuuga Aoyama
17th: Hanta Sero
18th: Denki Kaminari
19th: Minoru Mineta
20th: Kyouka Jirou
"You all did well enough. Normally, I'd have said the one who placed last would be expelled but then again...it would have been a logical ruse to have you bring out your best performance." Aizawa said.
A girl with short dark purple hair and AUX Cord jacks protruding from her earlobes named Kyouka Jirou breathed a sigh of relief as Momo gave her a reassuring pat on the back.
"SHOTA, YOU BIG FAT LIAR!" Shouted Present Mic as he ran in with an annoyed look on his face. "Me, Nem, and the other teachers were watching over you during the tests, and you just up and lie about that?! Didn't you expel an entire class last year because as you said they showed 'Zero Potential'?!"
"These ones are different, Hizashi. I can tell." Aizawa said as the class was all shocked at what they heard, all of them collectively thinking the same thing:
"HE EXPELLED AN ENTIRE CLASS LAST YEAR?!"