Okay, now while I said I was going to be writing an entirely different fic for all of February, I ended up actually putting that fic on ice and just played Overwatch 2 for the entire two and a half months I was gone. Sorry about that.

Anyway, here's the next part of the entrance exams. There's only one more left after this, I promise.

Special thanks to Writermakeshift for beta-reading.

XII. My Trial, Part IV

Huff...huff...huff...

Shit, this was disorienting—it was hard to breathe when he was in the middle of the giant cloud of dust that got kicked up by the Zero-Pointer when it fell to the ground, not to mention the constant ringing in his ears that just refused to go away no matter what.

He always hated this part about his Quirk. You'd think that with something like what he had, the only problems he would ever have down the line were not abusing it or making sure to use only the right amount of energy as he needed to, but then again, when did things ever go the way anyone wanted?

For what felt like several seconds, he just continued standing there, breathing hot air from his sweat-soaked undershirt, until the dust eventually settled to the point where he could safely open his eyes, and Katsuki could finally look at the robot with a growing feeling of disappointment.

"Tch. Thought I could get more out of that."

After all that hyping up from Present Mic to stay away from it, he would've been lying if he said he wasn't at least a little curious when it came to a robot you couldn't earn points from, but once he saw it with his own eyes, he couldn't keep down the excitement of taking it on. But as it turned out, all it took was him putting his hand on it before a single use of Explosion sent it into a collapsing heap of metal.

God damn it. Try as he might, there was only so much fun you could have with a Quirk like his before aiming for the top spot in the practical turned into nothing more but another glorified chore for him to do.

"You...you just..."

Katsuki's attention turned to the faint sound of another voice behind him, and his head whipped around to see the same pink-skinned girl he helped out from earlier, now looking at him with a look of absolute astonishment on her face.

"Yeah, yeah, I took out the giant robot, big whoop," he said, looking around for a comfortable spot on the ground, before walking over to a flat slab of debris and sitting down on it.

"I...wait." The girl (she had pink skin so he'll just call her Pink) said, giving him a look. "Aren't you gonna try to get any more points?"

Katsuki inhaled a deep breath through his nose. "Nah. I'm stopping here. I already know I'm getting in."

"But...isn't this U.A.? Shouldn't you be giving it your all? We still have a minute left."

"Yeah, that's not really my problem anymore," Katsuki replied, shrugging. "I don't know about you, but I already know I have a decent chance of having the most points out of everyone here. But you should probably get going if you want more points. Either way, I don't care. I'm done with this."

"Uh...right..." Pink responded, staring at him for another moment, before she finally took off running and leaving him to his thoughts, as he looked up and watched as the clouds moved ever so slightly.

Even with just a minute left, he still knew objectively it was part of a good mindset to keep trying his hardest to get more points...if it weren't for the fact that he lost count around sixty-two. That, along with how he'd spent the whole eight minutes taking out every single robot he laid his eyes on, meant he'd been overperforming the entire time he was here, and basically secured a spot among the top scorers without any real effort on his part.

If his growing disappointment over the lack of any kind of challenge from the robots hadn't sapped out his desire to keep going, then him barely breaking a sweat against the Zero-Pointer did the trick. Even though he, 'Zuku, and Uraraka all promised to do their best today, what was the point in still going when he couldn't muster up the energy to even care anymore? And it wasn't like they needed to know, right?

And by the way, how were they doing right now? 'Zuku did mention something about the exam having a possible assist system to him and Uraraka before they split up, so there was a good chance he'd even end up getting even more points if it turned out to be real, too.

Yeah. He was done. He didn't need, want, or even feel like doing any more. Who gave a shit at this point?

When she first laid her eyes on the Zero-Pointer as it came up from underneath the ground, all Ochako could do at the moment was continue staring up at the giant robot, unmoving where she stood. Somewhere in her mind, she could make out the noises from the other student test-takers instantly changing from idle chatter, to nothing but a shocked silence—the sounds and quakes from the rumbling just before even very quickly quieted down.

And as the Zero-Pointer kept watching on, with its colossal hands gripping the tops of the two buildings it was in between and its multiple red eyes unmoving and unchanging, she started to feel something like genuine dread, surely and quickly filling her entire being.

It was as if a god was passing its judgement on them, and all of them failed.

She didn't notice the unconscious step she took back, or even register the desperate screams coming from the other people, but it was only once the first person shoved their way past her, did she realize that everyone else around her was running in the opposite direction as fast as they could.

As the angry god ominously started wheeling its way forward, with her soon about to be in its way and crushed like an ant under a boot.

The sight of the green behemoth and the near-deafening cacophony of sound was enough to keep Ochako aware of what exactly would happen to her if she stayed where she was, and without another thought, she immediately turned the other way and made a break for safety.

"Hey, you! Wait!"

But the sound of a foreign voice and a foreign hand wrapping around her wrist kept her from moving, causing Ochako to whip back around to see just who was keeping her back.

"What are you doing?! Let me go!" she cried, the rising panic quickly showing in her voice.

The stranger who grabbed her—a black-haired boy with pointed teeth (and also completely shirtless, okay then)—immediately let go of her wrist. "Please! I just need you to hear me out! I saw how you used your Quirk! You can use it on people, right?!"

Ochako opened her mouth to answer, but the boy immediately continued. "I just need you to use your Quirk on me—" he pointed to himself, before pointing behind him at the Zero-Pointer.

"—and throw me at that thing's head!"

"WHAT?! Are you crazy?!" Ochako all but shrieked, her eyes widening as she took in what he just said. "There's no way you can take it out like that!"

"YOU HAVE TO TRUST ME ON THIS!" the boy yelled in response, doing something to his skin, and as Ochako saw something about him shift, he roughly tapped the back of her forearm, and she realized his skin actually ended up hardening to the point of being razor-sharp.

"My Quirk lets me break through metal! All you need to do is throw me! I'll take care of the rest!"

Before Ochako could give him her answer, the first thing that went through her mind was 'What would Midoriya-kun and Bakugō-kun do?', but as she saw the Zero-Pointer continuing to creep closer and closer, that thought died as quickly as it came, and she soon realized that it was only a matter of time before she was able to outrun the robot.

...unless she used her Quirk on herself to float out of harm's way, that was. But what would that mean for the boy who stopped her, the one with the half-baked plan that maybe could work? Could she really ignore what he had to say, when he said what his Quirk let him do? Could she really just shake him off and run away, leaving him to take on the Zero-Pointer by himself?

Could she live with herself and look her friends and All Might in the eye, after leaving another student to possibly die?

...

No. She obviously couldn't, no matter what. That just wasn't who she was—it didn't matter if this was just a random stranger with an insane idea.

Ochako took a moment to close her eyes, and took a deep breath. When she breathed out, she opened them again and looked him in the eye. "All right, fine! I'll help you!"

She watched as something that looked like relief shone in his eyes, before he nodded with a grin. "Just leave it to me!"

Ochako nodded in return, and without another moment to spare, she stepped forward and put a hand on the boy's stomach, causing him to start rising up in the air, with the feeling of the signature tingle in her abdomen flaring up in response to her Quirk's activation.

Wordlessly, she took a step back and stretched out both of her arms, taking hold of the boy's ankles once he was high enough in the air, and with him in her line-of-sight, began to spin around clockwise, starting off slowly but quickly going faster and faster.

"Woah...!" she heard him yell, but Ochako ignored him as she continued spinning and picking up as much speed as her own body would let her.

Not yet...

She remembered learning that the force of how hard something could make an impact was determined by its own mass, multiplied by its acceleration within a period of time. However, if that something was launched into the air, then it became subject to Earth's gravity, turning into something like a limiter to the total force because it was now constantly acting on it.

Not yet...just a few more turns...

So it meant this guy, who obviously only had the mass of a regular person to begin with, was completely reliant on the amount of acceleration she could get from him based on her own strength. But if she could give him just enough, combined with the way her Quirk worked, then that meant...

NOW...!

She didn't know how many times she had been turning, (she definitely lost count early on), but it was here that Ochako felt that this was the moment, and with a cry, she relaxed her hands and released her grip on the boy's ankles, stumbling as she did so to regain her balance.

For a moment, she could make out the sight of the boy flying upwards and upwards towards the Zero-Pointer's head, but not even a second later, she found herself frantically blinking, shaking her head, even slapping her ears repeatedly to try to shake off the inevitable state of dizziness from the amount of times she spun around.

Focus, focus, I need to focus...!

When the lingering sense of vertigo, light-headedness, and loss of balance finally left her and she was able to focus on what she could see, Ochako looked up at the Zero-Pointer, and she saw the boy make contact with the robot's 'face', looking like he almost effortlessly passed through the thing's head and even probably came out the other side.

With no time to spare, she immediately started sprinting forward, and once she was almost right up against what looked like the Zero-Pointer's wheels, quickly wrapped her hands around her forearms, activating her Quirk on herself and going airborne.

The few seconds it took her to float behind the robot seemed to last much longer, even with the help of how fast she had been going just before. But once she was finally on the other side, she canceled her Quirk's effect, landing just behind the Zero-Pointer's elongated wheels, which were finally slowing down to a stop. And then, she turned her gaze towards the giant robot's head, holding her breath as she saw what came next.

Wait...was he...?

Way up in the sky, she could faintly make out the boy (she seriously needed to come up with something else to call him) somehow running down the Zero-Pointer's head for all of three seconds, and as she continued looking up at him with squinted eyes and her arm raised to try to block out the sunlight, she saw that he was now...wait was that sliding she was seeing?

Oh yeah, his Quirk—guess it would make sense for him to be able to do that...wait, hold on, if his Quirk was being able to harden and sharpen his skin, then didn't that mean...

Refusing to tear her gaze away from the boy, who by now was plummeting towards the ground, Ochako immediately used Zero Gravity on herself, and kept her hands out above her as she rose higher and higher, meter-by-meter to meet him in-between. After about four seconds or so of floating upwards, she noticed several raised bars from an attached ladder, and reached out and grabbed hold of it to keep herself from going any higher.

She needed to catch him.

Ochako watched him fall closer and closer to the ground, and how he was frantically reaching out to his side for something, anything to break his fall. But she saw he was just a bit too far away, and she knew if he tried to break his fall himself at this point, then it would be bad, like really bad for him.

She needed to catch him.

Somewhere down the line, she saw him turn his head towards the ground, and for what felt like several seconds, the two of them made eye contact, and Ochako could clearly see the expression of...of nothing but genuine fear on his face, as he fell closer and closer.

By this point, she could hear and feel the pounding of her heartbeat like the beat of a drum turned up to maximum volume, and her grip on the bar growing even more slippery by the second as sweat continued to build up from her palms, but she still forced herself to wait—she had to time this right, because she didn't know what she would do if she didn't.

She needed to catch him—THERE!

And right when the boy was almost right above her, she launched herself away from the Zero-Pointer with as much force as she could put on her legs, holding out her hands to catch him, to touch him, to save him.

The impact of another human who probably came close to falling at terminal velocity colliding with her mid-air forced all the breath out of Ochako's lungs, but because he was right above her, she was at least able to slap him across the chest and finally break his fall. And while the force of her catching him pushed them down towards the ground until they were only a few feet above it, Zero Gravity was still doing its job, making it so that they could safely land.

Letting go of her companion, she put her hands together and canceled her Quirk's effects on the two of them, letting out an oof as she unceremoniously fell to the ground. Letting out a slight groan, she opened her eyes, thanking kami-sama for the small comfort of them landing in the shade where the sun was being blocked out.

"That was..." she heard a voice beside her begin, in between deep breaths. "...the manliest thing...I've ever done...in my life..." After several more moments of him taking deep breaths, he let out an audible sigh. "Thanks for that. I honestly thought I was about to die there."

"You're...welcome?" Ochako replied. "I never thought someone would tell me to just throw them up at the giant robot, but...it worked, right?"

"Yeah...I think I'm about to pass out now."

...eh? Did she hear that right?

Ochako could only blink as she processed the words she had just heard. She turned her head to the side, and saw that yes, he really did just pass out, and after a moment or so of just staring at his prone body, she couldn't help the slight giggle that came out of her mouth, before it turned into full blown laughter at just how ridiculous it all seemed.

At some point, she vaguely heard the voice of Present Mic announcing that time was up and the exam was over, but for right now, she just couldn't bring herself to care—she just helped take out a giant robot.

A giant. Robot.

She couldn't wait to tell her friends and Shōko-chan, once she got home.

Mineta Minoru was...quite a few things, actually. Lazy? Yeah, but he knew he could afford to be. Weird? It wasn't his problem if the normies around him could only understand their normie things. Perverted? Now that was something he took offense to. Could you blame him for simply wanting to enjoy women in all their beauty? (Looking at you, Kamamura—no one's ever going to want to ask your fatass out.)

But stupid? Hell no. He may not have been trying as hard as a lot of the other people in school were, but that wasn't because he didn't have the smarts to—with the amount of studying he could get a way with not doing and still managing to land good scores in tests, what exactly was the point? Not only that, it was also common knowledge that people who went into the Hero Course during high school also didn't need to go to university, either.

So yeah, he kinda already had his future laid out for him from the beginning.

At least, until he found out the practical exam consisted of fighting lots and lots of robots. Not that he'd ever tell anyone, but his first instinct after finding out exactly what he needed to do to actually get into U.A.'s Hero Course was to just give up, go home, and find something else to want to be. It didn't take an idiot to know his Quirk just couldn't compete with most of the flashy ones the top Heroes like All Might and Endeavor had.

Yes, the guy who gave them the practical orientation didn't specifically say anything about the robots actually having to be destroyed, but that didn't stop Minoru from thinking he was just overthinking it, and that he really wasn't cut out for U.A. after all...only to then be instantly thrown out the window at the first sight of a shiny red button near the underside of the first One-Pointer he managed to immobilize.

Most of the entire rest of the time since was spent by Minoru scrambling around for more robots to use his Quirk on, while at the same time praising Midoriya for coming up with the idea (even if he did immediately use his bullshit Quirk to leave literally everyone else in the dust), slowly but surely racking up a fairly decent twenty-three points by the time the ground started shaking.

All it took was one look at the giant fucking robot for him to do the sensible thing and immediately nope out of there like everyone else, but wouldn't you know, he ended up spraining his ankle the exact moment he turned to start running. Leading to Midoriya, being the man's man he was, saving his skin by straight-up catching a giant piece of debris that was about to land on him.

He didn't question it when he watched Midoriya run back towards the robot and start climbing it. He didn't even question the black tentacle things that came out of Midoriya's hands (even if his thoughts turned a bit towards eromanga for a second there). But it was as the Zero-Pointer finally stopped moving and its head started to wobble, that Minoru realized something.

Wait, was Midoriya about to fall?

This guy was...something else. Minoru caught more than a few glimpses of green lightning going around the Battle Center as he tried to gain his own points (and the following demolished robots), so watching him just shut down the giant robot without breaking a sweat like he was the next All Might or something...

He felt inspired. Inspired to do something. And right now, it looked like he needed help.

"Hey," he said, not taking his eyes off of the Zero-Pointer. "Hey," he repeated, even reaching behind him and slapping the glasses-guy who helped him out in the face a few times to get his attention.

"What—what is it?! Stop doing that!"

"Look!" Minoru yelled, pointing up. He was watching the Zero-Pointer's head slowly tip over, with Midoriya still standing on it. "He's gonna fall! We have to go back and help him!"

That finally managed to get his attention, at least, judging by how glasses-guy slowed down to a stop and turned around. He looked up at Minoru with a clear sign of apprehension on his face, and his mouth opened to ask him a question.

"What do you suggest we do?"

Minoru shook his head. "Get back to running, for one! I'll tell you on the way!"

He expected him to refuse and just keep running the other way to safety, but instead he crouched down into a runner's position.

"Fine. Hang on as tight as you can."

Minoru blinked from his words, before he immediately plucked two sticky balls from his head and set it against the glasses-guy's shoulder. Without wasting any more time, the two of them were speeding faster than ever towards the now-headless Zero-Pointer, and right underneath it, was a clear view of Midoriya in free-fall with his back facing the ground.

We're coming, Midoriya...!

Eromanga (エロ漫画) - Japanese term for erotic (read: hentai) manga.

If any of you have read my other fics, you'll see that I've updated my MHA x JJBA crossover, so I'm going to at least try to follow a schedule where I rotate between them every two weeks, but I will try to get chapter 13 out next week before then.

But just because I haven't updated this in a while, it doesn't mean that working on this chapter was the only thing I did with this fic. I've been spending quite a bit of time planning out how I want the next MHA arcs to go, and I'm actually really fucking excited to finally get to that point, because trust me, that's when I start leaning more and more into the whole 'Subaru moving on' thing.

But for now, you'll have to wait until about August for the fic to get to that point, especially considering my work, school, and gaming schedule.

Side note, for anyone who has a problem with Mineta's inclusion: yeah, yeah, token pervert characters are off-putting, but if a re-isekai'd Subaru can influence kid Bakugō's personality to mellow out considerably, then why can't that happen with a teenage Mineta? Would your opinion of the token pervert character change if he was drawn hotter or was a girl?

Chapter 13 ETA: 05/10/23