Ren rocked up to the practical exam sporting two polymer batons with taser tips, a pouch full of shurikens on his belt, several smoke bombs, and a grapple gun just in case.

A crowd of aspiring heroes stood before the giant gates to the exam area, each stretching or hyping themselves up in anticipation for the upcoming fight.

"Are you here to sabotage us?"

The students' attention was drawn to a stern looking boy with glasses. He seemed to be chastising a freckled boy with frizzled green hair who could only avert his gaze in embarrassment.

Ren immediately recognised the glasses guy with a stick up his arse as the one who asked about the zero-point obstacle robot during orientation.

Judging by his shoes and build, he must've been a competitive sprinter. Those tubes growing out of his calves no doubt had something to do with his quirk. A speed quirk maybe?

As for the nervous boy with freckles, Ren only vaguely remembered him constantly mumbling during the orientation and getting chastised by the former for it. Whoever he was, he was already halfway through failing.

Every fight starts long before the first strike is struck. If the mind is defeated, the body will quickly follow. Unless Freckles had some amazingly overpowered quirk, the poor bastard would be lucky to just make it through the exam in one piece.

"Okay, start!" shouted a familiar voice at the top of the exam arena-the same one that had given them the orientation.

Ren didn't miss a beat.

He slipped past the crowd unnoticed and charged alone into the exam area, electric batons already drawn. The sound of a hundred rushing feet followed behind him as soon as the others got over their surprise.

Ren had already scored points for himself by the time they caught up. He jammed the tips of his batons into the red glass eyes of any robot he came across and turned it electric for just as long as it took to short circuit them.

Whenever one set its sights on him, he'd toss a tethered baton or shuriken over its head to teleport right on top of it in the perfect position for a killing stab through the eye-or whatever gaps in the armour he could see.

Ren didn't bother keeping count of how many robots he took down or how many points they came with. He didn't have to know the exact number as long as he took down as many as he could. There was something much more important for him to keep track of anyhow.

'Right, one minute twelve seconds. Right, one minute fourteen seconds. Right, one minute eighteen seconds. Left, thirty eight seconds. Left, forty one seconds…"

The electric charges on his batons wouldn't last forever. His tests told him they could be continuously electrified for about an hour and some change before running out of power. He would've liked to make some adjustments to the design so they'd last longer, but there was only so much time he had between the martial arts training.

At one point, Ren spotted something odd while sliding across the ground between the legs of a two-point robot to avoid its guns. Dead centre on the underside of its spherical body was a bright red button that just screamed 'hit me'.

Curious, he punched the button while sliding through. He hopped back to his feet behind the robot and was about to jam a baton between its joints when the entire thing went limp and deactivated.

'They have off buttons on their crotches?' Ren's lips curled into a cheshire grin. 'My time has come.'

He slid the electric batons back in the holsters in his belt, trading them for a grapple gun and tethered shurikens.

Puffs of black smoke popped sporadically across the arena. Ren leapt from each of them to turn off nearby robots with a well-placed kick or punch to their general crotch area. Once he was done, he'd throw a tethered shuriken to teleport away or zip-line to the rooftops on his grapple gun for better vantage.

His competitors became unwitting distractions, drawing the robots' attention for him to turn them off without ever entering their field of vision.

Was it a dishonourable tactic? Maybe.

A dick move? Potentially.

Effective as all hell? Abso-fucking-lutely.

"Hey, that one was mine!" shouted one salty student who'd been robbed of a three-pointer.

Ren didn't bother to look at him. He just flipped the dude off behind his back as he grappled up to the rooftops.

Old habits die hard. Even in his new life, he was still a no-good thief at heart.

An odd sight caught Ren's eye as he searched the arena from above.

Some lanky guy with flaring purple hair was trying to take down a one-point robot using what looked like a rock in a sock. He was failing miserably and clearly out of his depth, but Ren had no choice but to respect the balls on him to even try.

Ren tossed a shuriken into the robot's glass eye before it could hit the lanky guy back.

A puff of smoke erupted in front of the robot. Ren's foot out from the smoke to kick a big red button above its single wheel, deactivating it.

"It takes guts to bring a rock to a robot fight, but it ain't gonna get you far." Ren turned to the lanky guy who was already out of breath despite not having actually accomplished anything. "And if you got a quirk, you should probably be using it."

An exasperated groan escaped the lanky guy's gritted teeth.

"It doesn't work on them," he said, the resentment clear in his voice. "It only works on people."

"Well, it sucks to be you then," Ren replied plainly.

He wasn't sure why he did what he did next.

Whoever this lanky guy was, Ren must've seen a bit of his old self in him. Scrappy and scrawny but still swinging at the world that tried to kill him every day. A burning determination to live that marked them as kindred spirits.

Or maybe it was just pity.

Whatever the case, it was his lucky day.

"Catch." Ren tossed the lanky guy his left baton, followed by his grapple gun. "You're due for an upgrade."

The guy just barely caught the gear, dropping his undersized rock in a nearly torn sock in the process. His purple eyes widened at Ren.

"Why are you helping me?" he asked, confused.

"I have a soft spot for underdogs without a chance in hell." Ren threw a shuriken into the air hard enough for it to land on a rooftop. "Aim for the joints if you can. Hit the off switch in their crotches if you can't."

"Wait!" said the lanky guy before Ren could teleport away. "What's your name?"

Precious time was being wasted on this conversation, but Ren supposed he could spare a few seconds more. He was pretty sure he already secured a spot with all the robots he already destroyed anyhow.

"Ren Isshiki."

The lanky guy nodded, his purple eyes hardened with determination.

"I won't forget this, Isshiki," he said. "I'm Hitoshi Shinso. I'll repay you once we're in UA."

"Just make it out of this in one piece and we'll call it even." With that, Ren vanished in a puff of black smoke, instantly appearing on the rooftop where his shuriken had landed.

The missing gear did little to slow Ren down. If anything, the lighter load made him work even faster.

His claws and feline agility allowed him to scale walls and buildings almost as fast as if he'd grappled up them. The remaining baton allowed him to deflect any attacks his way while his free offhand threw shurikens every which way for him to teleport from robot to robot.

Things were going as well, all the way up until he felt the ground rumble beneath him.

Ren quickly balanced himself on the ledge of a building he'd been running across. The fur on his black cat tail bristled with nervous energy before standing up on end when he saw the cause of the miniature earthquake.

An enormous robot larger than most of the surrounding buildings emerged from the ground, its blocky green head rising high above the skyline while its many red eyes stared down at the hapless students below.

"Final stretch then," Ren mumbled under his breath.

His eyes darted to the streets full of panicked students running as far away from the zero-point obstacle bot as their legs could carry them. They tripped over each other as they did, injuring many in the process.

Ren was about to run off on the much less crowded rooftops when two people caught his eye.

One was the freckled boy from before, sitting on his arse shitting himself while he looked up at the giant robot. The other was a round-faced brunette with pink cheeks trapped under a pile of rubble.

'Those two are fuuucked,' Ren thought.

He considered swooping in to help when the freckled boy suddenly sprinted towards the robot and hopped out of existence in a blur of motion.

Ren darted his eyes upwards just in time to see the freckled boy hundreds of feet up in the air in front of the giant robot's face.

The freckled boy then threw a punch so powerful that it immediately caved in the giant robot's face and sent shockwaves through the air.

'Where the fuck did that come from?!' Ren thought to himself.

Most of the other UA applicants were staring at the scene with mouths agape too, but Ren quickly shook off his surprise.

No point standing around like an idiot when he could snag a few extra kills while everyone was distracted.

But before he could make a run for it, he noticed the freckled boy falling from the air unconscious. Both his legs and one arm were completely limp, flapping behind him like windsocks as he plummeted towards the concrete.

'Wait, is he…?'

The freckled boy abruptly regained consciousness and Ren immediately heard him screaming at the top of his lungs.

"That moron!"

Ren hopped over several rooftops to get as close to the freckled boy as possible. Then, he tethered himself to his baton and tossed it as hard as he could at the falling boy.

A puff of black smoke exploded behind the boy the moment the baton was within five metres of him before whizzing past his head by mere inches.

Ren emerged from the smoke, his body stagnating in the air for just long enough for him to wrap one arm around the freckled boy's torso before gravity caught up to him.

"What?!" the freckled boy cried through his tears. "Who are you?!"

"The one who's going to save your arse!" Ren shouted through the turbulent winds blowing in both their ears.

He reached for the back of his belt for his grapple gun.

'Wait…' Ren grasped at an empty holster and abruptly remembered lending his grapple gun to some guy named Shinso.

"Oh, shit," he muttered under his breath.

"Oh shit?!" said the freckled boy. "What do you mean 'Oh shit?!'"

"It means we're switching to Plan B, Freckles." Ren tightened his arm around the boy's torso, tethering himself to his tracksuit. "I can do a short-range teleport to the ground then catch you but the timing needs to be perfect, so do me a favour and shut up so I don't lose focus."

The freckled boy, without any better options, immediately closed his mouth and nodded, tears still falling upwards from his eyes as they fell.

Ren shot his feet down towards the ground. On the off chance that he missed the teleport, he could at the very least land on his feet and lessen the damage for both of them.

'Not yet…'

The boys soon started falling at terminal velocity.

'A a bit closer…'

Ren sucked in as much air as he could while it was falling through it. His pupils shrunk into tiny slits at the sight of the rubble-strewn street quickly approaching them with each passing second.

'Almost time!'

Ren shut his eyes so he could better focus on his mental radar. A mental image of all empty spaces within five metres of the freckled boy's tracksuit filled his mind, giving him an accurate outline of everything within it.

The boy under his arm was fucked up beyond belief. He thought as much when he saw him falling from the sky, but it was another thing entirely to see it-or rather sense it-up close.

Both his legs were completely shattered in several places, as was the right arm he punched the giant robot with. All three limbs flapped loosely in the same cold wind rushing through their hair.

The fact that Freckles hasn't fainted from the pain yet was already cause for respect, though he could've done without the crying and sniffling.

Ren waited for the exact moment his mental radar told him the ground was in range. Then, he could teleport safely onto his feet and catch the freckled boy to break his fall, broken bones be damned.

But the moment never came.

Instead, he sensed a hand reach from out of nowhere to grab his ankle. His fall came to an abrupt halt the moment it touched him, and he nearly dropped the freckled boy in surprise.

Ren slowly opened his eyes. He found himself suddenly floating in the air a few inches shy of five metres from the ground. Gravity no longer seemed to affect him, and he was anchored in place only by the hand around his ankle.

His gaze trailed up the hand to discover the brunette from before. She was laying on the head of a robot which also floated in the air from what he could only assume was some sort of anti-gravity quirk.

Both Ren and the freckled boy under his arm awkwardly stared at her in disbelief.

"Uhhhh." Ren studied the bruised brunette's round and extremely queasy-looking face. "You alright there, Newton?"

"I'm fine," said the brunette, sounding not at all fine. She gingerly released her grip on Ren's ankle and he floated with the freckled boy inches above the ground. Then, she placed the tips of her fingers together and uttered a single word: "Release."

The effects of the brunette's quick dissipated and Ren safely dropped to the ground on his feet with the freckled boy under one arm. The robot head the brunette laid on crashed to the ground with thud as well and she immediately started vomiting.

"Whoa!" shouted Ren and the freckled boy in unison.

Ren quickly laid the freckled boy onto the ground, careful to not move his broken limbs too much, then rushed to the brunette.

"There, there, Newton." Ren gently rubbed her back as she puked her guts out. "Let it all out. You really saved our arses back there."

The brunette soon emptied her stomach. Her limp body slumped over the robot head like a blanket draped over a clothesline.

"Uuugh." She wiped the corner of her lips with the back of her hand. "Thanks, catboy."

The coarse sound of something dragging across concrete caught both their attention.

Ren turned around to see Freckles dragging himself across the floor with his one unbroken arm.

"I need to get at least one point!" he said to himself through tears in his eyes.

Ren watched the rather pathetic scene with the brunette, both their mouths half-open in surprise. If Freckles still hasn't scored a point this far into the exam, it was probably too late to do anything. Struggling to score right now with three broken limbs served zero purpose.

Still, Ren had to respect the determination if nothing else. There was always next year, and hopefully the crazy bastard will have learned how to control his quirk by then.

A loud voice gratingly distorted by a microphone rang across the exam arena.

"The exam is over!"

The voice was followed by a siren's ear splitting wail that filled the destroyed mock-city streets, just in case nobody was listening to the announcer.

Freckles' face morphed into a look of abject horror before it immediately crashed onto the floor.

"Oy!" Ren rushed towards the boy's unconscious body. "I wasted time saving your arse, don't go dying on me now!"

The other students around them started talking amongst themselves, mostly about the freckled green haired boy currently sleeping on his face.

"What's up with him?" one asked. "He just suddenly jumped into the obstacle…"

"He seems to have a reinforcement type quirk," mumbled another. "But it was crazy…"

Ren bent down and placed two fingers on the broken boy's neck while the others gossiped.

Freckles' pulse was still strong, despite the state of his body. He would probably be fine if left there for a while but it was better to be safe than sorry.

"You there!" Ren pointed at one of the students in the crowd, the glasses-wearing boy with tubes in his legs from before. "Quit standing around! Move those Ferrari legs and bring a damn teacher here!"

The boy with glasses immediately tensed up with his back standing erect. He opened his mouth to say something but was cut off before he could speak by the familiar voice of an old woman.

"Oh, that won't be necessary, dear."

Ren turned to the direction of the voice. His cat tail instinctually wagged a single time in joy when he recognised the speaker.

"Hey, I recognise you!" he said to the tiny old lady in a lab coat with a syringe in her grey hair bun. "You're the pro hero that treated me that one time, yeah?"

"The one and only," said Recovery Girl. "It's good to see you're doing well, Ren."

"Only thanks to you," said Ren. "I'm guessing you're the reason why UA hasn't been sued for child endangerment yet?"

Recovery Girl let out a hoarse but hearty laugh.

"Ha! You might be right about that." She slowly hobbled towards the freckled boy on her cane. "I should ask Principal Nezu for a raise."

Recovery Girl's lips puckered up before shooting out of her face onto the freckled boy's frizzy green-haired head.

Groans of disgust echoed around them. Ren just watched with his black cat tail swinging casually side to side.

Pale green light engulfed the freckled boy. His twisted limbs rolled back into their proper place. The broken bones underneath clicked into one another like a massive jigsaw before mending.

"He'll be fine now after some rest." Recovery Girl turned her attention from the freckled boy to gesture Ren closer. "Come here and open your hand, Ren. I got gummies for you."

"Oh, sweet!" Ren held out his hand and immediately tossed all the gummies she gave him inside his mouth. "Thanks, granny!"

"Yes, yes, just be sure to brush your teeth tonight," said Recovery Girl. "Now then. Is anyone else injured?"

The rest of the day went by without incident for Ren.

He got picked up by the butler, got home, and cat-napped the rest of the day until it was time for dinner. Both Mr and Mrs Yaoyorozu were there to celebrate the occasion, and Momo sat right next to Ren at the dining table.

While Ren wasn't sure if he could ever come to see Momo as his sister, he had at the very least come to tolerate her existence for the most part.

"Someone's hungry today," said Momo as she watched him demolish half a salmon by himself.

"Well, some of us actually have to earn our way into UA," said Ren dryly, causing Momo's eye to twitch in response.

"How was the practical exam?" Mrs Yaoyorozu asked.

"Uchimaru said there was quite a ruckus at your exam area," Mr Yaoyorozu added.

"I did fine," said Ren, too busy stuffing his face to make up for lost calories to be arsed with a long answer. "Pretty sure I aced it but I guess we'll find out in a week."

The week passed by in a flash.

Sure enough, a sealed letter from UA came in the mail and Ren promptly took it to his room to open it. When Momo saw him holding it on the way there, she insisted on coming to read it with him.

Ren guessed it was because she never got one of her own thanks to being a recommended student.

"Ready?" Momo asked as they sat together on his bed, looking more nervous than he did.

"Sure," said Ren, unworried.

Even if he didn't get into UA, there were plenty of other career opportunities he wouldn't mind taking up. He could get a job as a translator with his English proficiency if nothing else.

Ren broke upon the sealed envelope. Instead of a letter inside, he saw a tiny holographic disk while she rolled around between his deft fingers like a coin.

"Tch. Pro heroes." Ren rolled his eyes. "Always so extra."

"That's all part of being a hero!" said Momo excitedly. She lifted her shirt and pulled a whole folding table out of her belly to place in front of them. "Put it on the table!"

"Yeah, yeah don't get yer knickers in a twist."

Ren placed the disk on the table. A hologram of a blonde guy in a yellow suit in front of what looked like a crappy game show background immediately projected into the air in front of them. The man was built like a brick shithouse, and Ren vaguely recalled seeing action figures and posters of him in the houses he used to burglarise.

"I am here!" shouted the man with a wide grin on his leathery face. "As a projection!"

"All Might!" said Momo with stars in her eyes. "So the rumours must be true! He really is coming to teach at UA!"

"Oh, yeah, I know that guy," said Ren. "He's a bigshot hero, right?"

Now it was Momo's turn to roll her eyes.

"Yeah, he's just the number one hero in Japan," said Momo. "What, you can learn five languages but can't remember who the world's greatest hero is?"

"That's because I only remember useful shit," said Ren dryly.

All Might continued speaking in the projection, the smile never wavering from his face.

"Young man, I've heard about your story from some of my colleagues, and you have every right to be proud of how far you've come in a few short months. Your written exam was perfect! Pretty sure you could skip straight to university with scores like this but that's neither here nor there! As for your practical exam…"

Momo leaned forward in anticipation. Ren tried to look nonchalant, but his cat tail still tapped excitedly against the mattress behind him.

"You scored fifty five villain points in total!" said All Might at the top of his lungs. "An impressive passing number! If we scored you on villain points alone, you'd be just shy of the top ten! However…"

"However…?" Ren's tail stopped moving. A worried look wormed its way onto his face and quickly spread to Momo's.

"I'd like you to take a look at this."

All Might gestured to a TV screen beside him, which lit up to show a familiar scene.

It was the exam arena, with focus on a certain purple haired boy taking out robots and helping other students with an electric baton and grapple gun.

"Isn't that your gear?" Momo asked nervously.

"He seemed to be struggling so I gave it to him," said Ren. The black fur on his tail bristled.

Was that against the rules? He didn't recall the loudass teacher saying anything about it during orientation, but then again it might've been something so obvious that they didn't feel the need to mention it. Ren still wasn't sure how the hell regular schools were supposed to work.

"I'm sure you recognise the boy in this footage," said All Might. "His name is Hitoshi Shinso. While his brainwashing quirk is indeed powerful, he was at a disadvantage fighting against robots who were immune to it. But thanks to you, he was able to defend himself and eke out just enough points to pass."

The image on the screen changed again to show Ren falling from the sky with the freckled boy under his arm, his legs outstretched to cushion the potential impact as much as he could.

Momo looked horrified, but Ren merely narrowed his eyes at the projection of All Might.

"You saved a fellow student from a threat then gave him the means to defend himself at your own expense," said All Might. "And when you saw another boy plummeting to certain death, you leapt into action to save him with no regard for your own safety! Even when given a life of comfort, you choose to endanger yourself for the sake of others!"

"The hell's he getting at?" Ren muttered under his breath.

All Might soon answered his question, as he was actually there listening to him.

"The entrance exam was not graded by villain points alone! UA is a school for heroes, so of course we had to test for the most basic qualification for a hero: The spirit of self-sacrifice!"

The tv screen beside All Might changed one last time to show the entrance exam's scoreboard. Ren and Momo's eyes both widened at the name on the very top.

"Rescue points! Given by a panel of examiners for heroic deeds in the face of danger! Ren Isshiki, for saving and helping Hitoshi Shinso, fourteen points! And for trying to save young Izuku Midoriya from his fall, another thirty points! Combined with villain points, that makes the final score a whopping ninety nine points! The highest score this year!"

Ren stared slack jawed at his own name at the very top of the exam scoreboard. Momo had much the same expression beside him.

Somehow, All Might's already blinding smile grew even wider.

"Ren Isshiki, the road ahead will be hard, but I have every confidence that you will push through it just as you've always done! Welcome…to your hero academia!"