Unusual Pre-Chapter Note: Last week, this site massively fucked up and "posted" the newest update for this story... while making it "unavailable." After days of silence and no reply to a support email, it seemed to start working again. That being said, traffic on the last chapter was very low, so I have a feeling a lot of people missed the chapter before this. Make sure you go back and read it before this one, or things will make no sense at all.

"Oh crap!"

Izuku looked from side to side, his panicked breathing quickening as he watched the chaos all around him. Would-be heroes were engaged in battle on every side, and scrap metal flew liberally through the area. Overhead and far away, Izuku could see smoke rising from a chain of distant explosions that he could only assume to be Katsuki's doing.

"How does she have so many points?" Izuku said softly to himself before breaking out into a mad dash for the rising smoke. "It shouldn't even be possible. By my count, I've barely broken a thousand… there's no way I ca-agh!"

Izuku skidded to a stop as a humanoid automaton standing twice his height landed just before him, seemingly out of nowhere. The orange and yellow construct had a pair of airplane-like wings upon its back and a deadly looking horn above its singular red eye. With a mechanical series of clicks the robot raised both of its arms, the chain guns upon each spinning to life as it trained its firearms upon Izuku's chest.

Acting purely on instinct, Izuku threw his arm out to the side and upward at a diagonal. A curling, pulsating black tendril shot forth and affixed itself to the side of a nearby building before yanking him along with it. A spray of bullets peppered the air where the boy had been only a second before, denting the asphalt and raising tiny plumes of smoke in their wake. Izuku clung to the side of the building for all of a second before leaping off of it and toward the robot, his arm pulled back behind his head as he tapped into his power doubling Quirk.

With a strained cry of effort, Izuku sank is fist into the side of the robot's face, tearing some protective plating off with the force of the blow. The mechanical construct stumbled backward and raised an arm, firing another spray of bullets in Izuku's direction as it desperately tried to regain its footing. A searing pain screamed through Izuku's shoulder as two bullets grazed him, tearing through his clothing. The boy let out a hiss of pain as he thrust a palm outward, and another tendril with it.

The gooey appendage wrapped itself around the wildly firing gun and lifted it skyward, resulting in a hail of bullets going harmlessly up into the air. Before the robot had time to swing its other arm around, Izuku began to run in a wide circle, dragging the captured limb along with him before he spun and reeled in Blackwhip with a grunt of effort. The resulting pull ripped the robot's arm clean off its body, causing the construct to spark and jitter as it began to malfunction. With one final growl, Izuku ran in and threw a heavy, Quirk-empowered downward punch into the machine's chest to send it to the ground in a sparking heap.

"Wasting time…" Izuku said to himself as he paused to catch his breath. "How many points was that one? I don't even remember…"

"…you're bleeding…"

The odd, unfamiliar voice behind him caused the hairs on the back of Izuku's neck to stand up. It was definitely feminine, though it sounded quite young- almost too young for a high school student. There was a childish, playful sort of quality to the tone, though it was undercut by a raspy hint of amusement, and what Izuku swore sounded almost like lust.

As he turned to face the speaker, Izuku's eyes widened. There before him was an unassuming girl, roughly equal in height to him. She wore a typical school uniform almost identical to Ochaco's, though the innocent schoolgirl look was somewhat ruined by the long, tapered kitchen knife in her right hand. Her face was locked in a rigid, unnerving smile that seemed as though she was merely trying to mimic a facial expression she might have seen somewhere without fully understanding what it could mean. The girl's eyes were an odd, unnatural yellow, and her blonde hair was pulled to either side in a pair of messy buns with errant strands flaring out all around them in whorls.

"I…" Izuku started, only to look down at his sleeve with a dumbfounded expression. A bright red wound was staining his shirt from the impact of the rubber bullets, and somehow, seeing the injury made the pain intensify tenfold. "Yeah, I guess I am, a little..."

"How about I make you a deal?" the curious girl asked as she skipped forward, holding her knife behind her back. "You let me lick your wound, and we can partner up! We could get a lot of points with two of that Quirk of yours…"

Izuku could only stare, his eyes widening further as his voice became very small.

"…what?"

"Come on, come on! We don't have time!" the girl said excitedly as she stepped forward, causing Izuku to take a step back. "My Quirk lets me transform and steal other peoples' Quirks if I can get at their blood! I just need a drop, and I can help you out! There's only so much I can do with my knife, and I'm not even close on points right now. How about you?"

Panic overcame Izuku as the strange girl swayed from side to side. The thought of what could happen if he honored the request terrified him, as did the very notion of letting her run her tongue up his arm at all. Raining scrap metal from above broke Izuku from his stunned reverie, and he looked up just in time to see Amaya land before him with a robot's sparking head in her hands. She gave him a smirk before turning to the other girl, her brow raised.

"…I hear that right? You need blood for your Quirk?"

"Mm-hmm!" the student replied as she rocked on her heels. "Please? Pretty please? I'll put it to good use, I promise!"

Without hesitation, Amaya extended her arm to the side. A split formed upon the skin just below her wrist and snaked its way a few inches toward her elbow. Swirling, viscous torrents of red rose from the opening and began to twist into a small sphere in midair, as though the liquid was somehow being puppeteered into shape.

"From one blood Quirk user to another," Amaya offered before the sphere lazily drifted through the air toward the eager girl. "Not easy having an ugly Quirk, is it? Now stay outta my way. I plan on keeping my lead."

Izuku raised his hands to shield himself from the sudden wind as Amaya beat her wings and took off back into the sky. He watched curiously as she twisted into a midair spiral and smashed through the window of a nearby skyscraper, far away from the closest group of robots.

"Keeping her lead…?" Izuku repeated as he narrowed his eyes at the window. "So that was Kan, I guess."

A disturbing, slurping sound drew Izuku's attention back to the other girl. In her place was Amaya, or at least, someone who looked like Amaya in a totally different school uniform. She squirmed and struggled before a pair of massive wings busted out of the back of her jacket and flexed, spreading themselves to their limits.

"Whoa," Izuku commented. "You really can just transform… that's incredible! A-and I, I was going to give you some blood!" he lied, looking nervous. "I swear! She just beat me to it!"

"Aw, thanks!" the girl said as she thrust her hands out in front of herself and checked her nails with childlike curiosity. "Wow, her body feels weird. Proportions are all different. Never had wings before. Are we still partners?"

"P-partners?" Izuku stammered as he watched the girl look down at her own greatly increased cleavage.

"Like father, like daughter! Miss Kan is now sitting at a clean 32,000 points! How does she do it!? Twenty minutes remain!"

"Alright, let's team up!" Izuku said quickly. "I'm not even close to that, and we can tear through robots faster as a pair. Izuku Midoriya."

"Himiko Toga," the girl replied with a spin and little flourish of her wings before taking to the air. "Any idea where to start?"

Izuku pointed to the broken window, his face full of determination.

"…she just went that way. She must be doing something inside of the buildings that's worth a ton of points. We should follow her!"

"Hm," Himiko mused as she rubbed at her chin. "Sounds like a plan. Gimme a few minutes to figure out how to fly, and I'll get us up there!"

"…let's just try the door, for now!" Izuku suggested as he broke out into a run with Himiko in tow. "Hurry, though! We've got to catch up!"

Shards of glass flew into the building as Katsuki quite literally exploded his way in through a window. The inside of the room was totally bare, with blank walls and nothing but empty space and support beams occupying the space within it. Near the far wall was Daisuke, who was crouched near a staircase. As Katsuki opened his mouth to start yelling, Daisuke put up a hand and shook his head emphatically. After a brief pause, a woman's voice echoed down into the room from the top of the stairwell.

"Help! Please, I need a hero in training!"

Katsuki broke into a run, moving as quietly as he could as bright flashes from explosions and trails of gunfire zipped past the windows. The sounds of heavy footsteps on the floor above them echoed down the staircase, causing the ceiling to shake with each impact.

"Dude, we're on to something," Daisuke said as Katsuki joined his side. "Only one way upstairs, so be ready."

"You be ready," Katsuki snapped. "And don't screw this up for m-"

"Hey, guys! Find anything yet?"

Katsuki and Daisuke both flinched slightly as they turned to look behind them. The ball-headed, diminutive student from earlier made his way across the room and toward them, a purple sphere held in each hand.

"Shut up, you little twerp!" Katsuki hissed as he moved to meet the smaller boy. "Don't draw attention! There might be hostages upstairs!"

The smaller boy's eyes widened at the revelation, and he tightened his grip upon his balls.

"H-hostages? Like… for real ones?"

"Don't know," Daisuke said with a shrug. "Given how the robots are all using rubber bullets, though… probably not. But even fake hostages are probably worth a ton of points. This seems like a side mission better than the main quest, if you ask me."

"Either way, we need to stop wasting time," Katsuki pointed out. "I'm going up there. Follow, or don't."

"W-wait!" the small student said. "Shouldn't we scope it out, first? Whatever's up there sounds like a problem. I can get a visual upstairs for us before we go!"

Katsuki and Daisuke exchanged a quick look before the blond let out an irritated sigh.

"Then get it done. Now."

"Sure thing!" the boy answered with a ball-fisted salute before turning and running back toward the blown-out window. "The name's Minoru Mineta, in case you wanted to know!"

"Daisuke A-"

"We didn't," Katsuki interrupted. "Move it."

Minoru picked up the pace until he made it back to the missing window, where he began to slowly sidle out onto the ledge. With a careful motion, he stuck one of his spheres to the glass of the next window over, before shuffling sideways and adhering his other hand to a spot on the glass farther up. Within seconds, he had climbed up and out of sight.

"Whoo-wee, boys and girls! We've only got 15 minutes left on the clock… and that means no more leaderboard updates! No one will know who did and didn't make the top 16 until you get your letters in the mail! No pressure, kiddos!"

Katsuki clenched his teeth so hard that he thought they might snap under the pressure. As he waited for word from Minoru, he began to pace toward the center of the room, only for another identical cry for help to come down from above.

"This is stupid. We should just blow our way up the stairs, a-"

"Hey, bomb-head!"

Katsuki's lip twitched as he looked back toward the window, where Minoru was hanging and wildly waving a hand.

"Lookin' like five robots up top. They don't look like the ones on the ground, though- four of 'em are humanoid, heavily armored, and packing serious heat. The fifth is like a giant bipedal walker-thing with a huge gun on one arm, and drill on the other. They've got four hostage-robots tied to a support beam in the center… and each robot and hostage up there has a 5,000 painted on it…"

"That's 45,000 points…" Daisuke pointed out with an expression of surprise. "We've got a chance to blow past Kan right now with one room!"

"Then let's get upstairs," Katsuki ordered.

"Wait!" Minoru insisted as he waved his arm. "You can blow stuff up, right? Move like three feet to your right and be ready to blast a hole in the ceiling! We can take a robot down before the fight even starts that way!"

Katsuki closed his eyes and focused upon building up a layer of sweat upon his palms as he held his hands at his sides with his fingers clawed. He waited patiently for several moments as the sound of rushing winds echoed to his left, where he assumed Daisuke was readying himself to fly up the stairs. Just as Katsuki began to get annoyed, Minoru's voice called from outside.

"Now!"

Katsuki aimed both hands straight up and unleashed a massive blast, ripping through the ceiling and sending concrete and steel down to the floor. A humanoid robot was immediately buried within the rubble, and Katsuki ran up a few fallen chunks of concrete before firing another blast down into the fallen automaton to boost himself up into the new room.

The layout of the floor was exactly as Minoru had said- three robotic guards remained, standing in a triangular formation around a much larger mech walker. All of the targets seemed much more heavily armored and armed than his previous opponents, and several lasers pointed straight at his chest the second he appeared in their line of sight. Mechanical hostages wearing civilian clothes were tied around the central support beam, and point values were painted upon the chest of each of the machines within the room. In the split second during which Katsuki hung in midair, he allowed himself a wicked smile before aiming his hands behind himself and charging up a blast.

"Now this is what I'm talkin' about! Let's rumble!"

Author's Note:

Entrance exam ends next week.

-RD