There was a beat of silence after the zero pointer showed itself where neither the examinees nor the fifteen story robot seemed to move until a voice came over some sort of P.A. system" ONE MINUTE REMAINING IN THE TEST, ONE MINUTE!." As if a starting pistol went off the colossal robot started to move and destroy buildings around it as a tide of students started charging down the main street Izuku was on,some to collect even a single point more before the end of the test but most seeming to just want to flee its path. He couldn't truly blame them for running; most people couldn't hope to fight something like that. Not without a lot of coordination and a very solid plan, both things most of the examinees lacked.

These people weren't Izuku Midoriya and they didn't have the Gate of Babylon.

Moving against the crowd Izuku started to form a plan, he couldn't let something like that rampage through the city. He could send streams of spears and swords into its joints to try and cripple it, or drop his yacht onto its head to try and stop it. The plans running through Izuku's mind as he ran toward the robot came to a crashing halt as a cry of pain lanced out cutting through the chaos around him. It only took a moment to find the source.

Uraraka, her legs pinned to the ground under a chunk of debris directly under where the zero pointer was about to lower its giant foot. Izuku started to run, panicking slightly. All of his plans went out the window, as all of them ran the risk of crushing Uraraka with debris or tilting the robot forward and dropping the foot hanging above her. He was running out of time, Izuku pulled on his power despite not having any idea what he needed-simply wanting something, anything, that could stop that goliath in its tracks without potentially killing his new friend. Feeling the tug of a connection he shoved his hand into the portal and felt something slot into his hand. Not hesitating, he jerked the item free. He nearly stopped when he saw what the gate gave him before steeling his resolve and grabbing the hilt with both hands. He'd have to be careful but this could work.

He tightened his grip on the hilt as he felt the weapon began to turn and the lines along its cylindrical blade began to glow an ominous red. Before he could talk himself out of this course of action he shouted the activation phrase for the weapon. "ENUMA ELISH!" The glow on the weapon grew, as did the rotation of the blade. Vibrations and tremors shot painfully up both of Izuku's arms so without a second more of hesitation he swung Ea, one of the few named weapons Gilgamesh had in the gate and by far the most powerful. There was a flash of red, and then, as if someone had taken an eraser to a picture, the zero pointer was simply gone. Along with bits of the nearby buildings and a half block of the road behind it, but thankfully Izuku noted Ururaka was unharmed, having successfully unpinned herself from the rubble and was making her way down the road toward him. Izuku quickly tossed Ea back into the gate as pain lanced through his entire body, his arms were an angry, throbbing red from the tips of his fingers to his shoulders. Despite his best efforts Izuku began to curl on himself slightly as if his entire body was cramping at once. It wasn't long after that that he began to topple over, unconscious before he hit the ground.

Izuku thrust forward with a naginata, his muscles burning as he glided from one kata to the next. After his 'fight' with the zero pointer he had apparently been in a rough shape, most of his body covered in deep bruises with hairline fractures all the way up his arms and chest. Thankfully the school employed "Youthful Heroine," Recovery Girl, one of the most proficient healers in the country, so Izuku spent a few hours in the nurse's office instead of weeks in physical therapy.

Despite his body telling him it was fine his brain still remembered the pain he was in before he blacked out. Phantom pain in his arms and random tingling in his fingertips. All reminders of the price of using a weapon like Ea, and he knew there would be.

Ea was one of the only things in the gate that had a proper name to it and that was the least impressive thing about it. It was one of many such items Gilgamesh had procured while on the job. The way he told it, every so often someone with a technology or hyper intelligence quirk would surface with some crazy suit of power armor or a ray gun that turned metal into gelatine, and then a hero would swoop in and stop them and the tech would be confiscated and studied or, more commonly, destroyed. All of this was fairly by the books, especially for Gilgamesh, who made a point of going after villains like that due to his ability to lock the more dangerous items in the Gate to keep people with more ambition than sense from reverse engineering them and restarting the arms race . All of this was to say that when someone decided to break the mold by building a doomsday device both his father and uncle were immediately dispatched. Izuku didn't know the name of the inventor and never would,as they and their invention were kept out of the public eye and buried in an attempt to keep the public from panicking.

.

So naturally he pulled it out to show off to his nephew the moment Inko and Enkidu weren't around. He regaled the twelve year old Izuku with the tale of how he got the device and even went so far as to fire it at only ten percent power. It cost him a summer house, but the lake he got from it was quite nice… Something that young Izuku thought was the most incredible thing he had seen, current Izuku couldn't help but see as WILDLY irresponsible given what had happened to him using half that power. Izuku couldn't fight the smile that came to his face at the memory as he finished the kata. That was just the kind of person Gilgamesh was, but he embraced it so wholeheartedly that you could never seem to hold it against him.

He was about to start another set of kata before he was interrupted by his mother's voice coming down the stairs into the basement training room he was using. "Izuku, dinner's almost ready!" Taking a deep, cooling breath he stored the weapon back in the gate and replaced it in his hand with a towel he used to dry himself off before making his way up the stairs.

The Midoriya home was a modest one story home with enough room for the three of them to live comfortably rather than the extravagant mansions Gilgamesh preferred, or one that most would expect the family of a top pro hero to live in, but none of them would have it any other way. Izuku made his way into the kitchen and saw what his mother had made: katsudon, his favorite, but unfortunately seeing the dish didn't fill him with the joy it normally did. "No letter today either?"

His mother just gave him a remorseful look. " I'm sorry honey, I know the wait isn't fun but I'm sure that U.A. will be sending them out any day now."

Izuku tried to put on a reassuring smile and hide his disappointment. He had been confident during the exam and even for a little after that, having assumed got more than enough points to pass, until he learned about the collateral damage. The top floors of two separate buildings and two city blocks behind the robot, gone without a trace. It was a minor miracle that no one was hurt and was probably the only reason he still even had a chance of entering U.A. He couldn't help the anxiety and slight embarrassment that lanced through him when he thought about it. He had used an extremely dangerous weapon to save someone, only for them to save themselves. He didn't know if she would have made it without him but the fact that she could threw his whole mad dash to 'help' into question and not to mention he rendered himself unconscious right afterwards. And then there was the possibility of untold civilian casualties if it were real, and…

Izuku abruptly cut off his train of thought and took a deep cleansing breath. He had the bad habit of letting his thoughts spiral wildly and unhelpfully out of control whenever he was stressed or faced a problem he couldn't find the answer to. He had gotten better about catching himself over the years but he could never fully kick the habit. At least he didn't mumble it all out loud anymore. Izuku finally went to eat his katsudon rather than just stare at it lost in thought before another interruption stopped him.

"Izuku!" His mother, who had apparently left the kitchen without his notice while he was lost in thought, was back standing in the entryway of the kitchen. Her cheeks had the slightest bit of pink as if she sprinted from the front door to the kitchen and in her was a thick white envelope with a golden U.A. emblazoned on its side. "It's here."

Izuku all but lept from the table, dinner completely forgotten as he met his mother at the entryway. Wordlessly they moved to the sofa in the living room and Izuku tore open the letter only for not paper but a disk roughly the size of a hockey puck clattered to the table. No sooner did it settle than an image appeared above it of a small white mouse creature sitting in a desk chair far too big for him.

"Am I a bear? A mouse? No, I am principal Nezu, the headmaster of U.A.! This is a recording for Izuku Midoriya about your entrance exam scores!" The principal was chipper but Izuku had stopped breathing at this point, his anticipation choking him. "Now you passed your written exam with flying colors." Izuku felt the knot in his gut tighten, he knew he did well on the written test, months of study left him confident of that. It was the next part of the exam that would seal his fate. "Your practical exam similarly went quite well, with seventy three hero points and thirty two rescue points for a total of one hundred and five points, a very respectable score, one that very easily gets you over the bar for entry into the hero course."

Izuku felt a weight leave his shoulders-"However!" aaand the weight was back. "That is before taking into account the damage done in the final minute of the exam, in your attack against the zero pointer robot you did enough damage to two buildings that if this was a real city they would be condemned. Not to mention the damage to the street behind them. Normally this amount of destruction would result in an immediate disqualification." The words were a stake through Izuku's chest. He had failed. He had -

"However!" The hope in Izuku's chest was tempered by annoyance at the principal. This delivery method had to be on purpose and the chipper voice the principal had yet to drop only made it more obvious that he was messing with him. " After reviewing the tapes it became clear to the judges that your actions were taken in an effort to save another student from what you thought was grave peril, and that disqualifying you would go against not just the spirit but the stated goal of the hero program. Therefore it is my great honor to invite you, Izuku Midoriya, to this year's first-year hero course! We look forward to seeing how you grow and what new ways you go beyond PLUS ULTRA!"

With that the hologram switched off and the disk turned back into an inert puck as Izuku sat just processing everything he had learned. He did it, he got into U.A. He didn't botch his chance and was now one step closer to fulfilling his promise to Gilgamesh, one step closer to the top.