Chapter Nine: Stress Test

Having finished her lunch, Tsuyu had nothing left to do but talk with her classmates about the exam, both its previous portions and upcoming ones. She could even risk broaching other topics if she wanted to, but almost none of her classmates, even the more relaxed of the bunch, broke that mold, so neither did she.

She decided to contribute a little. "I hope this group practical exam has something to do with water, ribbit."

"We sure can hope," Ashido added. "Has there ever been one like that in the past? I don't remember."

"I remember that last time was an escort mission through a dark building," Yaoyorozu said. "I doubt they'll do anything too similar this time, but you never know. Maybe a combat test?"

The group practical exam took the longest in total even if it was the shortest individual portion. Each person was assigned to work with a group of nine others to accomplish some objective in half an hour, ten groups at a time. Each group ended their exam outside the stadium every year so the later groups didn't get an advantage, but other than that, the task changed quite a bit from year to year, shifting between rescue operations, villain apprehension, covert surveillance, and sometimes all three at once. Each exam tested many of the same components, but there was enough variability that scenarios rarely repeated verbatim.

Uraraka's face wasn't quite as pink as her cheeks, but it was getting there. "I'm not sure about you guys, but I wish the wait wasn't this long, it's getting on my nerves."

"It's going to be tough," Jirou said. "We can do it, though. We've done everything we had to."

Nobody quite knew where to take the conversation from there, so for a few seconds silence reigned. Then Tsuyu's phone pinged in her pocket, and everyone else's made some form of noise as well. When Tsuyu pulled hers out to check where it came from, she knew something was up.

Class 1-A had a variety of group chats connecting them, but the one that had just received a message contained the entire class. They'd even roped Eraserhead into this one, although how remained unexplained. (According to Uraraka, he'd just been "convinced," air quotes mandatory; she'd refused to elaborate any further.) Tsuyu wondered for a split second what could be so important that everyone needed to hear it right that second, but then she read the text and jolted like Kaminari had zapped her.

Toru: portal in bathroom tell everyone

Uraraka gulped. "Please don't tell me that means what I think it means."

"Let's assume it does," Todoroki said, taking a deep, long breath. "I'll tell the room; I presume others will trust what I have to say."

Before that belief could be confirmed or denied, a hideous shriek ripped through the room, and everything started flashing red. Seconds later, the sound of something heavy slamming into the ground echoed across the room several times, and while the light returned to normal and allowed Tsuyu to see again, the sound of microphone feedback echoed through the room before the intercom system flared to life.

"Attention, all examinees," the announcer said. "The stadium is under attack, and as a result, full lockdown measures have been initiated. Stay in large groups when possible. Lethal force is authorized where necessary. If the time comes, do not hesitate."

Tsuyu wanted to scream in frustration but just managed to hold it in. Unless the emergency doors were made of some top-secret antimatter resistant to Shigaraki's Quirk, all it'd do was slow his advance by a few seconds, and it trapped everyone currently outside the main venue away from their compatriots. She couldn't think of a worse response off the top of her head, but then again, no time for thinking about that. They needed a plan.

Before anyone could get there, though, Shouto announced the quiet part of that statement to everyone else in the arena. "The League of Villains must be involved in this; one of our classmates discovered one of Kurogiri's portals in the building. We may have numbers on our side, but they're experienced and prepared to kill children. Be prepared: don't underestimate them, and don't hold back."

Perhaps that hadn't been the right thing to say. Calling what followed pandemonium wasn't necessarily accurate, but it definitely magnified the panic already rippling through the arena. Even though they likely had yet to encounter them in person, just about everyone here at least had to have seen the aftermath of the USJ incident or the attack on their summer camp on the news, and neither had been pretty.

Even Tsuyu's nerves were rattled. The USJ may have worked out well enough, but Shigaraki and his pet Nomu had been the only ones doing any fighting there. The summer camp hadn't been too bad in that all of them were still alive afterward, but they'd almost lost Bakugo that day. Here, they had at least fifty times as many potential heroes on their side, but the League of Villains also had new allies and who knew what else, and it wouldn't take much for everything to go irreparably wrong.

"I can do this," Tsuyu said under her breath, trying to regain her confidence. "This is what it means to be a hero."

She'd defend herself and everyone she couldn't until she could no longer fight, and pray that was enough. For now, as ever, that was all she could do.

Yoarashi Inasa had been in the bathroom when the announcement had been made, meaning now he was separated from his companions while an unknown threat was on the loose. An unfortunate scenario, but one he thought he could manage well enough.

"Don't worry," he said. "We can handle this! This is what we've trained for!"

The other kids with him, maybe ten or so, all acknowledged him. He didn't recognize anyone from any of the top academies, including his own, meaning they probably looked to him to lead whatever operation was going to be run.

Then, a group of strangers rounded the corner with their fists bared, and any semblance of getting through today without being involved in some kind of skirmish went out the window.

There were three of them, all men. One of them was bald, broad-shouldered, and glaring at them with hate in his eyes. The second man was even bigger, wearing something sharp on his knuckles and a strange contraption on his back. Finally, the third man was a lot smaller and wore a cockamamie grin that didn't calm Inasa's nerves any. He didn't remember seeing any of them as part of the League of Villains, but they sure didn't look like they were about to invite them all over for cookies and tea. And all that meant was he had no idea what any of them were capable of.

The bald man's face split into a Cheshire grin, what looked like bright purple crystals beginning to form around his hands as he pointed at Inasa. "Not one of those U.A. brats, but you'll do."

Inasa could guess what he meant by that, and it wasn't pretty.

At the very least, he wasn't in this alone. As the villains advanced, just about everyone in the group, Inasa included, moved to engage.

One of them, a lanky girl who was dressed like she'd just wrapped up a paintball match, pulled what looked like a water balloon out of one of her voluminous pockets, but before she could throw it or otherwise attempt to attack with it, it disappeared right out of her hand. Before anyone spent too long trying to figure out where the hell it had gone, the smallest man had thrown it back at them.

That got the girl's attention. "Shit, don't let it touch you!"

Both parties scattered to avoid the balloon; it bounced once, then exploded in midair with a deafening bang, sending a liquidy substance flying in all directions. Most of it did little more than splatter the floor and walls, but a bit of it got on Inasa's leg, making him hiss in pain: it both looked and felt like paint that had been soaked in corrosive acid.

Inasa tried to knock down the largest man with his wind, because none of the others seemed capable of taking him down independently unless they were hiding something, but while it stalled his progress across the floor he was too heavy for the wind to easily knock him over, and that meant the other two had time to charge while he was busy, which very nearly cost him his head before he shifted targets. That blew both of them backward, but they kept their feet, and now the monster of a man in front of them was unhindered again.

Then the smallest member of their group, a boy who looked no older than twelve (even though you had to at least be in secondary school to apply for this exam, so what the hell), who'd just been standing in the back for the vast majority of the fight, jumped out in front of everyone, both his arms extended at ninety degrees away from his body like a stereotypical zombie. Before anyone, least of all Inasa, could decipher what he could be thinking, the boy made everything clear for them a second later. "Rocket punch!"

To Inasa's relative surprise, both of the boy's arms detached themselves at the shoulder and went flying towards their assailants at high velocity. One was batted out of the way by the largest man's fist with little more than a grunt, but the other streaked past him and hit their smallest adversary in the face, knocking him down for the count with a nasty groan before, disturbingly enough, he began to almost dissolve in place.

Behind him, Inasa heard a "What the…" He would have echoed the sentiment if it wouldn't have killed his confidence.

That didn't mean the fight stopped, though. Now, the paintball girl had an opportunity to use one of her weapons without it being stolen. A second paint bomb emerged from her pocket, and sure enough, this one didn't get ripped out of her hand before she realized what was going on, allowing her to hurl it at the behemoth. He tried blocking it, but he cut it open instead, which just made things worse. He had just enough time to scream, and then he exploded into goop.

However, their last adversary had dodged the paint bomb and now was charging at them. Inasa fired again, but his aim wasn't quick enough and the man leaped to the side to dodge his hasty attack. Then, before any of them could land a hit on the man, he got within firing range of the rocket punch boy, now lacking any means of defending himself without arms, and even as one of the others tried to throw themselves in front of the blow, they just weren't fast enough.

The crystal bit deep into the boy's abdomen, the man ripping it out just as quickly, even though he left quite a bit of residue behind. The rocket punch boy hit the ground without a sound, blood surging from the wound in his stomach. The man smiled, the crystals surrounding his arms stained with gore. "Looks like I've won here."

Not on Inasa's watch. With a scream, he put everything he had into his wind, blowing the crystal-wielding man into the opposite wall so hard that a fridge-sized chunk around the impact zone disintegrated. The man went the same way, too: instead of beginning to bleed or anything of the sort, he dissolved into a puddle of brown sludge, still stained red from the blood of the fallen student.

All that effort had taken something out of him; he slumped against the wall, his heart pounding in his chest and sweat coating his brow. However, that didn't mean he could just stop working and call it a day. He and his compatriots didn't seem to be in danger for now, but someone was bleeding out on the floor and no one was helping him, all of them frozen in place. He couldn't just stand there. He had to do something.

"The bathrooms are right there, someone see if there's first aid we can use," Inasa said, even though he knew it was probably useless. Even if they staunched the bleeding, barring a miracle the boy wasn't coming back from an injury like that.

Then Inasa heard more footsteps coming from down the hall and knew their priorities had shifted. "Everyone, boys' bathroom, now. We need to get somewhere defensible."

Everyone, regardless of gender, slipped into the boys' bathroom, taking the armless boy with them and trying to stop him from bleeding out. It wasn't a fortress or a hospital, but for now, it was all they had.

Spinner prowled the halls outside the bathroom Kurogiri had utilized so they could make their entrance, looking for any stragglers. He would have liked to join the largest group, whose current plan was to gain access to the main stadium and wreak as much havoc as possible, but he admitted he'd probably be more useful here. Cramped quarters made climbing walls more useful, and close-range combat became far more effective with fewer avenues of escape available.

At the moment, he was trying to find that damn girl who'd seen more than she should have. Everyone from that wretched academy had the nasty habit of discovering things the League of Villains needed to stay secret, from their bases to their plans.

It emboldened Spinner's search further. If he could get her, it'd probably be taken as a job well done; perhaps she'd be of value as a hostage. Bakugo's kidnapping, as disastrous a move as that had been, was a solid plan that fell apart due to circumstances they really didn't control. Anyone other than that hothead being taken captive by them while gaining a recruit was no longer in the question, so being a hostage would have to do.

"I know you're here," Spinner said, trying to raise his confidence. "Come out and things won't get bloody."

He got no response, not even the sound of footsteps. Maybe this girl's Quirk came with sound-dampening capabilities or something. There was no other way she could have been this difficult to track otherwise.

As he rounded a corner, his search rudely got interrupted by Shigaraki, who almost materialized out of nowhere, and without even having to break through the wall to do it. "Spinner, what the hell are you doing?"

"Looking for that invisible girl," Spinner said. "She'd make a good hostage."

"She's not important anymore, we can find her later," Shigaraki hissed. "Now, we need to figure out where we go from here."

Magne joined them, getting their attention in a second. "Uh, guys? We've got a real problem…"

Spinner had no idea what that problem was, but Magne led the both of them back to the room where everything had started, and then he saw the detached arms and the large bloodstains on the floor, and everything fell into place.

A string of curse words that eerily reminded Spinner of Bakugo later, Shigaraki looked like he would have put his head in his hands if doing so wouldn't have killed him. "Well, if my opinion about the Shie Hassaikai wasn't set before, it definitely is now. We'll handle them once we're done here."

Spinner blinked a few times, feeling like he'd been left behind again. "I thought the whole plan was to cause as much chaos as we could."

"Not like that," Shigaraki said. "We can't just go around giving random people game overs. We do that, we've got every two-bit hero in the country trying to find us and 'bring us to justice,' or at least their fucked-up version of it. If we cause some mayhem but don't resort to murder, everyone wins: we accomplish our objective, they don't die, mission completed, show me the results screen."

That raised a major question, one which Magne thankfully covered. "If we're looking to cause chaos, isn't the main stadium a better place? It should be easy enough to get in."

"I can only decay one door before I get taken out," Shigaraki said. "We can't use that as the only entry point because then everyone has to funnel through it, and then we all get sniped and we accomplish nothing. A couple of Overhaul's goons might be able to do it, but they're doing their own thing right now, we can't rely on them. Maybe Mr. Compress could help, but other than that, we need to determine how we're getting the drop on everyone else at this point."

Toga's voice echoed from down the hall to solve that problem for them. "I'm being useful, Shiggy! Come see how!"

They found their answer in the form of a perfectly square hole in the wall about fifty feet down the hall and eight feet up the wall. Judging by the nearby grate, it was likely an air vent that serviced the entire facility, and based on the smear of blood around the entrance, Toga had already started crawling through it. The vent would be a bit of a squeeze for the smaller villains and Spinner himself probably wouldn't be able to fit through unless Shigaraki went first (a bad idea in its own right for a multitude of reasons), but whoever designed the ventilation system likely didn't consider the possibility of the stadium being an invasion target.

Shigaraki smirked. "Looks like we don't need the doors after all."

Magne sighed. "I'm not sure if you've noticed, but not all of us are going to fit in that. We can't just ignore the doors entirely."

In one fluid motion, Shigaraki took off his gloves. "Doesn't mean it won't be a nice distraction. And that's what I'm here for, now, is it?"

A large number of faculty members had not been in the main venue when the lockdown process began. Many of them were scattered far and wide, Scythe included. However, that didn't mean the announcement didn't apply to them; everyone, no matter their current location, prepared to fight for their lives and protect their own. Scythe's group of fighters was on the smaller side, but she didn't mind that. She had the intellect to guide others in a pitched battle and she wasn't half bad at stealth, but above all, she loved getting an opportunity to let loose and send those who deserved it home in pieces.

They weren't being attacked at the moment, a small blessing; it meant she got to better learn how useful the people she'd been stuck with were. "Does anyone here have a Quirk that either works at range or is good for crowd control?"

Only two of her compatriots raised their hands. One of them, a large woman with an even larger mouth, had a Quirk that was simple enough to explain. "I can shoot my teeth out of my mouth like bullets."

That sounded promising, but there was always a catch. "Do they grow back?"

"Yes, but it takes a few minutes. I'll have to ration ammo."

The other hand belonged to a man of dark complexion with brown eyes that seemed to suck in light. "My Quirk's called Focus; when it's on, anyone within a certain range has a compulsion to look at me over anything else. Its range is about thirty feet in front of me, fifteen feet behind me, and six feet to either side, and the effect is stronger the closer you get."

That Quirk might be marginally useful in a pinch, but it had a glaring problem. "Can you turn off friendly fire?"

He shook his head.

"Save it for when we're desperate, then, because that messes everyone here up too," Scythe replied.

Before anyone could say anything else, several nasty grinding noises erupted nearby, and within a few seconds, a massive hole had opened up in the wall, meaning their location was now anything but secure. The two figures who entered their room through the hole provided more than enough proof of that.

Scythe expected Shigaraki to be one of them since a huge section of the wall had just vanished like nothing, but neither of the new arrivals looked like him. The first was a slim man wearing a bag covered in drywall flecks over his head, and the other was a behemoth armed to the teeth, complete with heavy steel knuckles that looked capable of smashing her skull to pieces. She didn't recognize either of them from the League of Villains' other attacks: lovely. That meant she had some fodder to warm up with.

The smaller man didn't even acknowledge their presence: perhaps the bag was on his face to mask his crippling anxiety or something. Meanwhile, the larger man's face broke out in ecstasy. "Come get some!"

Two of Scythe's number broke off from the group to engage, a petite man who was all sharp edges and a muscular woman with a bone crest on her head instead of hair. As soon as they got close, though, the larger man revealed his Quirk. His torso started spinning around so fast it blurred, and as both of his aggressors tried stepping back to reassess the situation the man jumped into them. Both of them went flying back at least ten feet and landed hard, neither of them looking like they were getting up anytime soon. Amateurs.

Well, that meant this was her time to shine. As the man advanced toward her, Scythe slashed with one hand before his range included her, opening five bloody gashes into his chest and torso without ever having to touch him. His shoulders stopped spinning and he howled in agony, just in time for him to erupt in a spray of brown goo with a second swipe. Scythe swore; she'd been hoping he was the real deal.

"They're clones, the League of Villains is in on this," Scythe explained, just in case they didn't know how Twice's power worked. "Twice can make a lot of them as far as I know, but none of them know how to take a punch. One solid hit and they're gone."

Everyone absorbed that information, and Scythe became aware she'd just made herself the de facto leader of this crew. As long as they handled marching orders, Scythe didn't care about much else at the moment.

"Someone handle those two," Scythe said, pointing to her downed colleagues. "Everyone else, stick with me and we should be fine."

The man with the focusing Quirk got her attention again, Scythe unsure whether his Quirk was involved. "We should probably try to get into the main arena, that's where most of our students are and we need to protect them however we can. Can you cut through the door?"

"I can try, but I'm not sure what material the doors are made of," Scythe said. "If it can't be cut by conventional means, we're out of luck."

Despite her show earlier, her Quirk only gave her the same cutting capacity as an average sword. Trying to use it to cut through metal would lead to nothing but disappointment and maybe some sparks. Mildly useful if they were stranded in the wilderness without supplies, but in a cramped area where a fire could turn deadly in seconds, it was the opposite of what they needed.

After another pause, the woman who could shoot her teeth began speaking. "If we're not being attacked, I say we should get out of here. There's others out there that could use our help, even if we might not be able to get to our students."

That statement seemed less like a prediction and more like little more than a fundamental truth at the moment, so Scythe nodded and that was that. She and her allies by convenience left their room and began prowling the halls, Scythe ready to butcher anyone who threatened them and everyone else just following in her wake, as they should.

As soon as the announcement had been made, a handful of those trapped in the venue had tried to break through the doors, but those things turned out to be resistant to everything thrown at them: force, heat, electricity, corrosive chemicals… the list went on. The terrified portion of Aoyama's brain hoped Shigaraki would join that list, but he knew if the time came, he couldn't leave fending off that madman to others in good conscience.

Once it became clear the doors were there to stay, everyone in the main stadium had moved away from the doors, and Aoyama was no exception. If Shigaraki could melt through the doors, it wasn't an instantaneous process, so they'd have a few seconds of warning, but no one found any reason to senselessly put themselves at risk.

Aoyama's gaze kept darting between all the entrances he could see, which encompassed six doors. None of them budged or began to flake off while he watched them, but that didn't stop him from keeping his frantic search up, waiting for the hammer to drop.

Still, it came far too soon, and with far too little notice. Aoyama didn't see Toga until after the screaming started, sending him whirling to determine its source.

She'd buried one of her many knives in the shoulder of a wraithlike girl with no hair and translucent skin standing far away from any of the doors. Both of them screamed in response, one chillingly cheerful and the other piercing and raw and ugly. The noise caused a ripple effect across the room, a wave of noise crossing the room as those not gripped by fear moved to engage Toga as she started laughing, her face and her knives a mess of blood.

A flash of movement in the corner of his eye caught his attention for a split second, making him glance upwards as he caught others crawling across the beams that crisscrossed the arena ceiling in seemingly random directions. He hadn't thought anyone would use those as a means of sneaking up on them: unless they could fly, it was far enough up that the drop promised to kill or cripple anyone who fell. Apparently, that hadn't been enough to dissuade the League of Villains and their new friends.

Not knowing what else to do, Aoyama pointed up. "Danger above, attention!"

He'd tried to warn everyone of what was coming, and it seemed to help, but not enough. In one case, a girl who looked like she'd been fashioned of wood stepped back in time to prevent a strange villain wearing some kind of bird mask from landing on her before engaging. In another, a ghoulish figure dropped behind a large group of heroes-in-training and caused them all to stumble from some unknown force, meaning that now all of them were wide open.

Aoyama charged them, as did everyone else in Class 1-A. Every last one of them had come here expecting a challenging exam, and their expectations had been proven right in the worst way possible. Yet, with his nightmare unfolding before his very eyes and a full-on brawl erupting inside the stadium, everyone desperately fighting for their lives, he couldn't let everyone expecting great things from him down, no matter the circumstances.

If he ever wanted to be a hero, now was when he needed to prove it. There had already been enough senseless terror today; no innocents were getting hurt if he could help it.

"Attention!" = "Look out! / Watch out!" in French. (As far as I know, anyway. I know almost as much French as I do Japanese.)

My apologies that this chapter came out a few days late. Blame my lack of planning on that one: everything after Tsuyu had just been marked in my notes as 'extended fight scene.' All the other scenes were more or less spontaneous inclusions, which led to the word count getting away from me. Again. (Next chapter's shaping up to be even longer, but at least this time I have all the scenes ready in advance.)

Unfortunately, I've hit a roadblock trying to plan anything after Chapter 11, so I may have to go on hiatus to try and figure out the back half of the story. (I have an ending in mind, but I'm not sure how to get there yet.) The next two chapters shouldn't be impacted, though: my posting schedule should return to normal for those.

That's all I've got. Thanks for your patience, and I hope to see you again on the 4th for Chapter 10.