Izuku ran as quickly as he could, his heart pounding as he headed for a nearby building. Himiko was flying back toward him from near the skyscraper, her movements somewhat unsteady in the air as she adjusted to her new body.
"Toga!" Deku called as he cupped a hand around his mouth. "What did you see up there!?"
"Hostages!" Himiko called back as she swooped down to hover a few feet off the ground in front of Izuku. "Robot hostages, acting all adorable. There's hostages in a bunch of random buildings all around, and they've got point values!"
"We're supposed to be acting like heroes…" Izuku muttered to himself. "Treating this as a real situation. That's gotta be what Kan's doing, and how she's so far ahead!"
A sudden, deafening noise caused Izuku and Himiko to snap their heads to the side. Not far off, the zero point robot had put its fist through the side of a skyscraper. A rain of glass and steel flew down to the streets below as several other students began to retreat away from the gargantuan machine.
"Is that…" Izuku pondered, before facing Himiko again. "The zero point villain! It's going after hostages, probably in buildings that have no one trying to save them!"
"Then wouldn't stopping that thing count as 'saving' all of the hostages?" Himiko asked as she gently beat her borrowed wings to stay afloat. "Are you insane enough to try it?"
Izuku cracked his knuckles and balled his fists before taking a deep breath.
"…I'll do anything in my power to get into U.A. University. Let's go!"
"Die!"
Katsuki flew forward, propelled forth by a pair of explosions behind himself. The boy whirled into a midair spiral, rubber bullets flying off of him as he spun through the air like a blazing spear. Just as he reached the bipedal mech walker, Katsuki threw out his right hand and pressed his palm to the freezing metal of the cockpit. In a split second, the steel flashed orange as he let off a massive blast, pushing the robot backward and filling the room with a colorful explosion and clouds of smoke.
As Katsuki flew backward and landed, a rush of green wind pushed the smoke off to the side to heighten visibility. Daisuke stood on the other side of the room, trails of air looping around his arms. Between the two boys was the remaining collection of three elite gunner robots and the mechanical walker. Beyond the metal of its chassis glowing orange, the bigger machine appeared entirely unharmed.
"What!?" Katsuki roared. "How in the… hit 'em with everything you've got! Take down the shitty human-looking ones first!"
Daisuke nodded an affirmative as a hail of bullets flew his way. With a wave of his arm, the flying rubber was blown off to the side by a rushing wind, and he ran in toward the first attacker. The robot was brandishing an assault rifle and firing wildly, until a telltale click signaled that the machine had run out of ammunition. Daisuke made a grab for the weapon, only for the aggressor to dodge swiftly to the side and whip him across the face with the side of the rifle, sending him reeling.
"Ow! What the hell is up with these things? The ones down below were stupid!"
"Stop messing around and bring your A-game!" Katsuki yelled as he fired off another explosion toward one of the two robots attacking him. The boy let out hiss as his hand cramped, and he dodged out of the way of a rocket-boosted flying kick. "Where the hell is Balls!?"
"Don't know!" Daisuke answered as he maneuvered around another attempted rifle bash, only for the larger mech to speed toward him with its drill-arm spinning. Without hesitation, he took to the air and dashed off to the side, clear out of the way of the charging machine. "How is this even legal!?"
"Read the fine print next time!" Minoru answered as he climbed out of the hole that Katsuki had made in the floor. The diminutive boy was holding the torn-off arm of the machine from the floor below, which he discarded in favor of the shotgun that it had been holding. "U.A. isn't liable for any injuries sustained by going inside of the buildings, or by the zero point villain! Another clue there's stuff to do in here!"
"Forget the fine print and fight!" Katsuki ordered. The sudden swing of a shock baton nearly caught him off guard, but he managed to duck beneath the second robot's swing and grab its arm. With a quick, concentrated blast, Katsuki blew the robot's arm clean off at the elbow joint and seized the electrified weapon before tossing it toward Minoru. "You like weapons, right!? Make yourself useful!"
Minoru caught the weapon in his free hand as he circled the other two combatants. Just as Daisuke did a spinning flip out of the way of the pursuing walker, Minoru set down his shotgun and pried a purple sphere from the top of his head.
"Any day, now!" Daisuke said with a bit of annoyance as he shot Minoru a look. "I could use a little help over here!"
"I'm strategizing!" Minoru whined as he took careful aim. "Be ready to hit the smaller one with everything you've got!"
Daisuke managed to land a few quick punches on the humanoid robot before using a blast of wind to blow the firearm from its hands. Just as he thought he had the machine on the ropes, the robot raised its fists into a classic boxer's stance and took a wide swing at his jaw, which Daisuke barely avoided by dipping his upper body backward. Suddenly, the machine overextended itself and became unbalanced, its feet seemingly stuck to the floor below it.
Down around the robot's right leg was a collection of gelatinous purple spheres, each the size of a softball and stretching as the machine pulled against it. The gooey mass held the robot fast to the floor as its facial lights switched from a stable green to a panicked red. Seeing his opportunity, Daisuke surrounded his right first in a coating of furiously roiling winds, before punching hard for the center of the machine's chest. His fist crashed into the metal and rocketed the winds outward, letting them tear clean through the robot's metallic chest cavity. Circuits and wires scattered all about as the robot began to shut down, spasming and flailing all the while.
"Nice one!" Minoru praised as he turned to face Katsuki, who stood victorious over the smoking heap of the disarmed robot as he dodged and weaved away from the other. "Just keep the mech busy until Bomb Boy's free!"
"I'll be free in a second!" Katsuki snapped as he charged forward, slamming his shoulder into his opponent.
The robot became unbalanced as Katsuki gripped its face and began to charge up a blast. A mere second later, the automaton's head was blown clean off its body, the stump of its neck a smoking heap. Katsuki tossed the body aside and dusted his hands off, making a show of the gesture as his fingers twitched and spasmed.
"You're overdoing it…" Minoru pointed out as he kept his eyes on Katsuki's hands. "You need something to mitigate the eff-"
"Did I ask you, Short Stack!?" Katsuki yelled as his neck tendons tightened in fury. "Shut up and help take down the big one!"
"Yeah! Please!" Daisuke insisted as he slid along the ground, his feet an inch off the floor and enveloped by streaks of wind. "Nothing I'm doing seems to even put a dent in this thing!"
Minoru took a deep breath as he, Daisuke, and Katsuki surrounded the remaining walker in a triangular formation. The robot turned in place, sweeping its gun-arm from target to target as it seemed to analyze and prioritize them, one by one.
"I… I can gum up its joints," Minoru suggested. "Make it less mobile?"
"What the hell good is that gonna do?" Katsuki seethed. "It's got rocket boosters on its back. It can still charge clean across the room, and even if it can't move, we can't crack its shell!"
"What about that stun rod?" Daisuke asked as he began to circle. "Short circuit it?"
"Doubtful that would work," Minoru replied as he gave the implement a spin, circling along with Daisuke. "It'd have to be one hell of a high impact in the right place for it to do that."
"…high impact, huh?" Katsuki asked, as his lips curled into a sadistic grin. "That gives me an idea…"
"Uh… that thing's big," Himiko said hesitantly as she and Izuku made it within two blocks of the zero point villain. "Really… really big…"
Izuku swallowed hard as he looked upward toward the mechanical monstrosity, only to begin having second thoughts. The zero point villain stood as tall as some of the surrounding buildings, and had a generally humanoid frame with a rectangular prism head. Two rows of blinking red lights made up the machine's 'face', and giant missile arrays were affixed to its shoulders just beside the head. The entire thing was painted a deep green, clearly contrasting the bright red "0" upon its chest. Though it carried no obvious weapons in its hands, its massive arms and legs were large enough to cause incredible damage to anyone or anything unfortunate enough to move into its path.
"Y-yeah…" Izuku agreed. "It's… it's really, really big…"
"Whoa, what are you two doing!?" a voice called from off to the side, drawing Izuku and Himiko's attention. "That thing's worth zero points! We've gotta run!"
Eijiro waved an arm as he caught Izuku's eyes, beckoning the other boy to follow. In the briefest moment, the two boys achieved a silent understanding, and Eijiro looked back over to the giant robot and its entourage of smaller helpers.
"…you're not seriously gonna fight it, are you…?"
"…yeah. We are," Izuku said matter-of-factly as Mina gave him an incredulous look from her place at Eijiro's side.
"But… I mean… is it even worth trying?"
"This kid's got a theory," Himiko began as she finally landed. "And it sounds right to me. We take this thing down, we score big. After all, it's destroying the city, and we're supposed to be playing the part of heroes, right?"
"Oh, man…" Eijiro griped. "But what if Present Mic was playing it straight?"
"Did it sound like he was playing it straight?" Mina questioned. "We all thought something was up, with the way he was talking. And you mentioned that there was a trick to this," she added with a nod at 'Amaya'.
"I did?" Himiko questioned, before realizing she was still in her borrowed body. "I guess I did, huh? So, are you in for this wild ride?"
"Um… excuse me?" A nasally, feminine voice asked from off to the side. "Did I hear you right? You're planning to fight that thing?"
The group caught sight of the newcomer one by one- a girl with a wide face and overlarge, sunken eyes was clinging to the side of a nearby skyscraper. Her deep green hair was tied back into a ponytail with a complicated, ribbon-like knot. She had her fingers splayed wide against the structure and seemed to be sticking to the surface in defiance of gravity.
"Looks that way," Eijiro answered. "You're welcome to join us! The more people we have, the better chance we've g-"
From on high, a huge explosion tore through the side of the building that the new girl was clinging to. An entire section of windows blew out as a huge, spherical figure began to fall at a rapid pace, boosted along by a series of explosions aimed behind it. As the giant projectile sped ever closer to the ground, a voice called out in a scream that could barely be heard at ground level.
"Get the hell outta the way!"
Izuku realized almost too late what he was looking at as the figure of a mechanical walker with Katsuki clinging to its back became clear to him. Reacting purely on instinct, Izuku slung Blackwhip out for Eijiro and Mina before pulling them into himself and firing off another tendril for the building. He zipped toward the skyscraper and pulled the other two adolescents close as Himiko furiously beat her wings, putting distance between herself and the falling robot as it hit the ground one block over like a bomb.
A huge explosion tore through the street, spreading fire and shrapnel all around as billowing smoke rolled along the ground and rose into the air in a thick plume. Izuku dropped from the building immediately and began to run toward the scene, leaving Mina, Eijiro, Himiko, and the new girl to drop to the ground and follow him.
"Kacchan!" he called as he made his way toward the crater in the street. "Kacchan, are y-"
"I'm fine!" Katsuki called, breathing hard as he stood next to the smoking hole in the road. He turned to face Izuku, his uniform torn and singed. "The hell are you doing here!? The zero point villain's nearby! Stop wasting time!"
"No, it's…" Izuku began as he watched Daisuke float down, carrying Minoru upon his back. "Kacchan, I don't have time to explain, but if we can take that thing down…"
"Oh, hell no!" Daisuke called as he turned and looked up at the zero point villain, which had just reduced another skyscraper to a pile of rubble. "We could barely handle that walker, and you want to go after that? I'm out."
"Izuku!" Ochaco called as she ran up a side street, waving her arms frantically. "Are you hurt!?"
"Uraraka!" Izuku called back with a smile, only to see Amaya flying along behind her. "No, I'm fine, but we could use your help! Both of you!"
"…hey," another deeper, husky voice called from next to Katsuki, seemingly out of nowhere. He turned to find a girl that looked somewhat familiar, her earlobes ending in extended headphone jacks. "You're… Bakugo, right? Was that your name? It's been a while."
"…who the hell are you?" Katsuki shot back, only to shake his head and let out a growl. "Stop distracting me! How sure are you that this is worth our time, Deku!?"
"I… I can't exactly put a percentage on it, or anyth-"
"Only ten minutes remain!" Present Mic called through the speakers mounted around the city. "And it looks like a bunch of kids are gathered around to do something potentially stupid! Are we really about to see a group of hopefuls take on the zero point villain!? But why would you bother? After all, it's worth zero points… isn't it?"
Amaya landed hard next to Himiko, who appeared to be an identical copy of her other than her clothing.
"…if that doesn't seal it, then you're all idiots. That giant mech is worth something, and it's targeting the hostages in the buildings that we haven't been going to. That's the real test, here."
"Hostages?" Eijiro asked, blinking. "What hostages?"
"How are there two of you…?" the wide-eyed girl with the tied hair asked as she raised a finger to her lips.
"…wait," the girl with the headphone jacks upon her earlobes asked with a disbelieving laugh. "You guys are all going after the big one? You're serious right now?"
"Oh, damn it all, if we've got a crowd going, I'm back in, I guess," Daisuke added with a shrug.
"If you give me a minute to think of a plan…" Minoru started.
"Shut up! Everyone, shut up!" Katsuki commanded. "We've got ten minutes to make this happen! If you're too chickenshit to come with us, then run. If you're in, then follow my lead, and listen for orders!"
Katsuki began to run down the street toward the zero point villain as it turned toward the crowd. It stood towering over the remaining buildings, with a small army of about twenty other robots around its legs. As he got closer, Katsuki fired off a pair of blasts and took to the air. Izuku watched for a moment, before he, too, began to run.
"…you heard Kacchan! We can do this! Who's with me!?"
One by one, each of the gathered applicants began to take off after Izuku, making their way down the road and toward the fight of their lives.
Author's Note:
The entrance exam was supposed to be two chapters. Now, we're looking at four. Tune in next week for a massive battle.
Also, I am now running a Discord server aimed at fanfiction authors and fan artists! If you write or draw for RWBY or any other fandom, feel free to join up. I'm aiming to build a support network, connect people for commissions, and just generally create a cool place to hang out. Even if you don't create fanworks, you're welcome to join up to connect with writers/artists and just chill together. The link is in my profile!
-RD