3- Exam
"What's up UA candidates!" The chatter in the auditorium began to die down as a man with abnormally tall blonde hair that seemingly defied gravity, walked up to the podium. "Thanks for tuning in to me, your school DJ!" The silence that followed the man's enthusiasm was only interrupted by somebody coughing. "C'mon! Lemme hear ya!" It was quite impressive how the man remained so loud and confident even after seeing how unresponsive his audience was.
"Keepin' it mellow eh? Well, that's fine! I'll skip straight to the main show!" The screen behind him lit up, displaying the silhouettes of four oddly shaped robots. "Let's go over how this practical exam is gonna go down okay? Are you ready!" He enthusiastically yelled the last part out, but his only reply was another cough and somebody muttering something unintelligible.
"Like your application said, today you rockin' boys and girls will be out there conducting ten‐minute mock battles in super‐hip urban settings. Gird your loins, my friends. After I drop the mic here, you'll head to your specified battle center, sound good?" Some more muttering arose from this proclamation, including the pink girl attempting in vain to find out what Azula's battle center was.
"Okay, okay, let's check out your targets." He began dramatically pointing a ruler at three of the silhouettes on the screen. "There are three types of faux villains in every battle center. You'll earn points based on their level of difficulty, so better choose wisely." His enthusiasm seemed to never fade as he accentuated nearly every word with wide movements of his arms. "Your goal in this trial is to use your quirk to raise your score by shredding these faux villains like a mid‐song guitar solo. But, check it!" He jutted a finger out at the crowd, "Make sure you're keep'n things heroic. Attacking other examinees is a UA no‐no, ya dig?" He wagged his finger side to side, but before he could continue, a head of blue hair shot up from the crowd. His hand raised.
"Excuse me sir, but I have a question!"
The presenter responded quickly, his confidence unwavering, "Hit me!"
"You have only listed three types of villains, but on the printout, 4 types of villains were portrayed!" He began to erratically chop his arms up and down, "With all due respect, if this is an error on UA's end, it is shameful! We are exemplary students and expect the best from Japan's best hero school!"
He was beginning to sound arrogant, so Azula tuned him out, only for her ears to be bombarded with the pink girl's questions.
"Azula! Hey, Azula!" That naive grin was still on her face, and their noses were nearly touching with how close they were.
She sucked in a breath, 'still better than listening to the other boy.' "What." She slowly grabbed the girl by her shoulders and pushed her away.
"What battle center are you in?"
Azula turned her attention back to the screen, where the DJ was pointing at a fourth silhouette. "E."
"Awesome! I'm in E too!" Azula was hardly listening to her anymore, focusing on the explanation of the fourth robot instead.
"Well little listener, that is a great question! The fourth robot, however, isn't worth any points, it's just an obstacle, so even if you did beat it," He paused to spread out his arms in a dramatic fashion, "it'd be pointless!"
As the man finished his explanation, Azula began listening to the pink girl again. "Do you wanna work together, we could get a lot of points!"
'I don't need this worm's help! Who does she think she is!' She turned to glare at the girl, before stopping. She easily cleared her face of any malice as she saw a chance to get more points."Why yes Ashido, that would be marvelous! Why, I heard that if two people take down a robot, they each get double points for what the robot was originally worth." A faux smile appeared on her face as she lied through her teeth.
The girl's eyes widened at this change in demeanor, before gratefully taking the chance to do something with her new friend. "Yay!" As the people in the rest of the auditorium stood up to make their way to their assigned busses she grabbed Azula by the hand, dragging her along whilst babbling about what they could do. "I can excrete acid from my skin! What about you Azula?"
Azula allowed herself to be dragged along by the girl while trying to listen to her through the sounds of chattering in the quickly emptying auditorium made it difficult. "I produce flames." She kept it vague, even if she was trying to build trust with this girl, she didn't need to know too much.
"Ooooh that's cool!" They had finally made it to their busses and began to board them, luckily, they were on the same bus. "How hot is it? How do you do it? Are there any drawbacks?"
Azula brushed off the girl's questions with her own. "Is your acid flammable?"
This caught Ashido off guard, which was made apparent by her dumb expression. "Ummm…" She brought a finger up to her chin while staring off into space, "I think so?"
While the pink girl began babbling on about foolish plans and such, Azula began scheming an actual plan.
-C-O-R-
After a 10-minute bus ride of enduring the girl's babbling, they arrived at a large city. It must have been just shy of the size of Omashu, but while Omashu had massive walls and hills, this city had massive skyscrapers and roads.
"Ashido." This made the girl pause in her ramblings. "I have a plan. You will run ahead of me and toss acid on the robots, not enough to melt them, but enough to coat them in it. I will do the rest." She was barely able to look down on the girl due to their similarity in height, but she still radiated a powerful, in-control energy.
"Alright! I won't let you down Azula!" She grinned widely at her new friend, "You're so smart Azula! What middle school did you go to?"
She hid a cruel smirk behind a friendly smile, "I suppose I'm just naturally great."
Ashido opened her mouth to speak, but only got a few incoherent blabbers out before a loud voice interrupted her. "Go!" The gates to the mock city opened, and everybody looked up to the tower where the voice came from in confusion.
"You won't get a countdown in real life! C'mon! Get a move on it!" Azula didn't need to be told twice. She sprinted down the streets of the city, waiting for Ashido to follow.
Soon enough, the rest of the candidates followed. Blasts of electricity, water, and even some body parts flew through the air, but Azula waited until she saw Ashido run ahead of them. It seemed she did have some modicum of intelligence after all, she was seemingly secreting acid from her feet to make her slide across the concrete roads faster.
-C-O-R-
Mina slid past a group of robots and threw some globs of acid on each one of their bodies, it didn't take them down, but she knew Azula would be able to finish them with her plan, whatever it was. She narrowly avoided the approaching tail of a two-pointer swinging towards her, and slid under a one-pointer, splattering acid on its underside.
She had stayed on a street on the side of the city, where Azula had told her to go. There were a lot of robots but no people here, and the street was so long that even after 6 minutes of zooming through it, she could see where she had started, as well as the robots that she had covered in a weak, flammable acid.
Panting and heaving, she finally made it to the end of the street, her shorts and t-shirt completely soaked through with sweat.
A loud explosion caught her attention, and she saw a blue glow come from an alley that branched off a street from her right, followed by plumes of blue flames.
"Have you completed your task?" Azula's proper voice ran through her ears, and she immediately relaxed.
"Y-yeah." She was still catching her breath, and she leaned against a wall to calm herself.
"Good. I'll take it from here." Azula stepped into the street Mina had just been dashing through. There were dozens of robots, most slowly rambling towards the two, but impeded by burns and acid covering their metallic shells. Some, however, seemed to have been completely destroyed by the acid, that was fine, there were still plenty of robots left for Azula.
"S-so," Mina had mostly gotten her energy back, and began to get curious about what Azula was planning to do, "what's next?" She got no reply, and instead, Azula slightly crouched down. "Hey! Azula!" She continued her questioning as the aforementioned girl closed her eyes and took in a deep breath.
Azula prepared herself, taking in a deep breath to fill her lungs while rearing her right fist back. She stepped forward with her left and punched with her right. Her clenched fist erupted with an immense burst of power, propelling a massive fireball the color of brilliant azure forward, its scorching flames roaring and crackling as it hurtled through the street.
Mina's eyes locked onto the fireball in shock as it thundered down the street, so captivated that she didn't even feel the rumble of something ginormous emerging from the ground in the center of the city. Everything on the street was left scorched and blackened by the thundering fireball, and over a dozen robots were caught by the flames, and as blue flames latched onto the acid on them, they melted into slag.
When the fireball finally reached the end of its life, it dispersed into the air, leaving a street a street on the side of the mock city bathed in blue flames and heaps of melted steel. The origin of the flames stood up and proper with hands behind her back. She would have displayed the perfect picture of stoicness, if not for the smug look her face had adopted.
"Oh. My. God!" The pink girl's squealing took her out of her own self-admiring thoughts, "How many points do you think that was? Why was your fire blue? Are you always this cool?" She had run up to Azula with her never-ending flow of questions and begun dancing around her in a circle.
She felt a grin threaten to overtake her face as she was doused by praises, direct and indirect, by the girl. "Why yes, I suppose I always am this powerful." She put her hands on her hips, content to let the girl continue to fawn over her, but she could not deny how her arms burned with every motion. Truthfully, that had probably been the most powerful attack she had ever done, probably even more powerful than the attacks she had done with the power of Sozin's comet.
"Alll-Right!" The voice of the school DJ rang through each battle center, catching the attention of thousands of participants.
A green-haired boy with mangled limbs stared up to the announcement tower in horror, fearing that he didn't have enough points.
A boy with explosions crackling in his palms let out a cruel laugh from atop a pile of destroyed robots.
A round-faced brunette puked her guts out in front of the ruins of a massive zero pointer, grateful to the boy who had saved her from impending doom.
A boy with engines protruding from his calves focused his confused gaze on a boy with ruined limbs, wanting to know why he had sacrificed himself to save a girl instead of getting more points.
Azula forced herself to stay standing proud as a pink-haired girl fawned over her, refusing to admit weakness.
-C-O-R-
She forced herself to keep going until she could no longer. She collapsed to the ground in a heap, the ruins of multiple practice dummies surrounding her. Azula rose, her muscles protesting, and forced her legs to carry her from the backyard to her bedroom, where she fell into her bed, allowing herself to finally relax.
After getting home from the entrance exam she had set up some practice dummies in her spacious backyard. She had gone through all of her katas, with and without fire, until her muscles failed her.
Nothing but the best from her, if she solely relied on her natural talent she would eventually hit a skill ceiling. If she kept practicing, she would keep getting faster, better, and eventually good enough to be the best.
Despite how good she knew she did, her dreams were filled with doubt. Feelings of inadequacy and anxiety flooded her mind, making her sleep fitful. 'What if I didn't get first? What if I failed? What if I'm not good enough?' No matter how much she tried to fight and deny it, the thoughts never left her mind
AN: I know i said i would do 4k chapters, I just didnt know how i would make this chapter longer other than putting something in that I want to put in the next chapter. Sorry lmao
-First things first, if you notice that I wrote a character wrong, (got their personality wrong or something of the sort) plz tell me, I want my writing to be accurate and good.
-Similarly, if you have a recommendation to improve my writing in general, please tell me, i always want to improve and be better.
-Onto character things, somebody sort of recommended i replace aoyama, tbh its because I like him, hes just so silly. Ill try not to let my own personal biases mess with the story too much, but I just like Aoyama, i also might make it so hes not the traitor.
-One of my biggest pet peeves is when ff authors ust ruin a character so the mc can do something "cool" (use their overpowered ability that is boring to read about) and completely ruin another character's growth. Like when somebody writes Izuku soloing Stain. That has a massive impact of Iida's character growth, and without it, he would become a stagnant, boring character. WIth that said, I dont want to negatively interfere with the growth of any characters, Azula with of course have an impact in the story, not TOO big though, but i will make sure each character gets their development and growth.
-I dont wanna infer that anybody reading this might be stupid, but my writing might not be able to convey it, and tbh, most people on this site have dents in their skulls. Throughout this story, Azula displays a need to always be strong and to not fail. This is because in ATLA, Azula always wants to be the strongest, and be perfect, and hates being anything but. I feel like her insecurities would be amplified after losing to Zuko, somebody she had seen as weak her entire life beating her would make her in turn, feel weak. She enjoys ego boosts, which is part of the reason she likes ty lee, and she would enjoy the praise from Mina.
Also, Azula is not a good person at this point, later in the story she will grow as a person and change, but right now, he is not good, as shown by how she uses Mina. Also if you couldn't tell the "if two people taker down a robot they each get double points" was a lie Azula told Mina.
-I have realized that Izuku could be somebody very important to the story, as he believes in second chances, like how he wanted to help Shigaraki and Nagant. He will not be major for all of the story, I don't want the story to just be Azula clinging to Izuku bc those fics are boring asf. But he will be there.
-sorry that my ANs are so messy
-ILY all :3
