Denki walked into the packed lecture hall. He was almost late, yet he managed to make it in time. Se sat down in the last row. This turned out to be a good idea, as the teacher in charge was Present Mic, who was famous for being loud.
He sat next to a cute girl with black eyes and purple hair with a strange wave-like pattern in her hair. Denki knew all about that, as his own hair tended to make a similar pattern. It was some sort of quirk weirdness that made the pattern stay in place as his hair grew, and it even showed up in different hairstyles.
The girl's pattern was less prominent than his own, yet they probably worked the same way. She was nervously twirling her long earlobes. Were those audio jacks at the end? Not the strangest quirk he had ever seen, but interesting nevertheless.
As he sat down, the girl looked at him with an annoyed expression.
"What are you looking at?" she asked.
Denki pointed at his own hair.
"You are the second person I met with a hair pattern."
A look of recognition flashed through her face, and she was about to say something when a loud shout interrupted her.
"Welcome to today's live performance! Everybody say 'Hey'!"
Denki grimaced at the loud noise, but the girl winced in pain and covered her ears. With earlobes as unique as hers, he wouldn't be surprised if her quirk had to do with sound. The teacher sounded like they were standing too close to the speakers at a concert.
Present Mic kept explaining the rules of the practical exams as the most strait-laced student he had ever seen interrupted him. The question was valid, but something about how he asked rubbed Denki the wrong way. Even his tie was straight and probably ironed. Denki hated ties with a passion and either wore his own loosely or, like today, not at all.
As the explanation finished, he looked at the form he received. He was in group D. As he got up to leave, the purplette beat him to it.
"Well, good luck," she said as she left through the door.
Sitting in the back had its advantages as he was one of the first people to leave. He arrived at one of the locker rooms and soon changed into his gym clothes.
The practical was quite well suited to him as it featured fighting robots and allowed the usage of any gear. The latter was a little unfair, as it gave a lot of advantages to those who came from heroic backgrounds, but they usually took the recommendation exams. Denki himself could take that, but his academic performance was not good enough to pass the higher requirements to qualify for it. Honestly, he barely made it to the normal exams.
UA's exams were similar, always featuring robotic opponents in different scenarios, so preparing was somewhat easy.
Apart from his middle school gym uniform, he took a pair of special boots and wrapped thin chains on his forearms, with the end of the chain going under the uniform. It was a shame to cut it, but not like he was going to need it after graduation.
Most people said Denki was a born winner as he inherited his mother's electric perk. They may have been right, and he loved his perk, but it had a severe limitation. Unlike some other electric quirks that could manipulate electromagnetic fields to control the electricity after it left their body, he could only release the electricity from his skin with no direct control. This forced him to use conductors like chains and wires or use hand-to-hand combat.
After he finished changing, they were led to a bus to take them to the exam site. UA was big enough to require buses within campus.
The ride took them ten minutes, and he sat next to a red-headed guy with very spikey hair. The guy wore loose gym clothes, but he was built like a tank.
"Yo, I'm Eijiro Kirishima," he greeted with a goofy smile.
"I'm Denki Kaminari. Nice to meet you."
"You too, man. Nice chains. Really manly."
"Thanks. I have an electric quirk and need something conductive to add a little range, you know."
"No way! That's smart. I thought they were your quirk."
"Hah! I could see that. So, what can you do?"
"Oh, my quirk is Hardening. It makes me tough as steel and gives me a strength boost, too."
"That's so cool. I can see how that would be useful to a hero."
"Yepp, it's really manly; I love it."
They spent the remainder of the bus ride talking about random things and continued their chatting even after they arrived in front of a vast walled city section that was easily a kilometer long on each side.
"Man, to think there are at least seven of these on campus. They are crazy big. How do they even maintain it?" Kirishima asked.
"Well, they have Cementos on faculty, so that probably helps a lot. I know the support course students spend a lot of time repairing what the hero course breaks."
"Oh, that's cool. How do you know about the support course? Did you want to go there?"
"Hah, no, but my dad's an alumnus. He wouldn't stop bragging about it," Denki said with a fond smile on his face.
"Oh, that must…"
And… begins!" Came the voice over the lathe loudspeaker.
Denki and Kirishima looked at each other before the latter took off running.
"Good luck!" He called back.
Denki had a small smile on his face and actually knelt down. He unfastened the back of his boots and connected the blades to the bottom. An urban environment suited him just fine.
He activated his quirk and pushed his electricity out of the soles of his feet. The powerful electric motors roared to life, spinning up the freshly attached roller blades. He had two sets of wheels, sacrificing being able to make sharp turns for stability.
He came up with the design himself and built the current prototype. His old man gave some hints, but it was mostly his work.
He came up with the idea around a year ago when his middle school went out skating.
People had a common misconception that electric quirks gave some sort of speed boost. It came from the Electric Hero Livewire, who had a transformation quirk. If he got a yen for each time someone told him he could just run electricity through his muscles to get stronger or faster; he could buy a decent hamburger by now. All you got when launching a lot of electricity through your muscles was cramps. He definitely didn't know that because he tried it when he was ten and definitely didn't get an hour-long lecture about it in the hospital.
Still, he needed a mobility option, and it was the best solution while still staying portable. Most electric vehicles were limited by their battery—something he never had to worry about.
He soon caught up to the running applicants before overtaking them. He turned back and reversed the motors in his skates before calling out to Kirishima.
"Good luck, dude!"
"Not cool, man," the redhead complained. "So unmanly."
Denki kept on going, and it was only a few seconds before coming up on the first robot. It was a quick one-pointer. He ran into it at full speed, using the skates to strife to the side as he let the stains in his arms fall. He strikes at the robot with the chain while changing it with a lot of electricity. He had no idea whether the robots were insulated or how much punishment they could withstand, so he used a lot of power to destroy it.
After the first robot short-circuited, he kept up his hunt. The skates may be useful, but he had no way to stop quickly. Except for running into things, that is. He kept running at top speed and destroying robots.
"Six minutes, two seconds remaining," came the oddly specific announcement.
By his own count, he destroyed close to forty points worth of robots. He had no idea how good that was, but he had high expectations. On the other hand, he needed to slow down as he was nearing his wattage limit. Not finding out the limitations of the robots was costly, but he was more pressed for time.
He continued his hunt, this time with less electricity per strike. A lot of robots took multiple strikes, and the others were closing the gap. Several people with long-range quirks stole his kills as he couldn't finish them with a single strike anymore.
At the three-minute mark, the exam changed. The zero pointer came out of nowhere. The gigantic robot was rampaging through the city and demolishing buildings like they were made of paper.
It came out at a bad time. Denki was close to his limits, and his hands had already started shaking. He didn't hope for many more points, and the giant made his job close to impossible.
He should have somewhere around fifty points, which was not great but not terrible either. The damn robot seemed to focus on him as he managed to electrocute another one-pointer while running.
Suddenly, one of the candidates fell behind him, right in the robot's path. Denki was not sure if UA had some sort of failsafe. He knew Recovery Girl could heal many things, but she couldn't even bring back the dead.
Since there was no death in the previous exams, the rational part of his brain told him the candidates would be safe. Still, he was running on an almost empty tank, so rational thought was not relevant now.
He did the only thing he could to stop and ran head-first into a ruined robot. His head went swimming from the impact, but he stopped.
He ran back to the kid, took him by the neck of his uniform, and put as much juice into his skates as he dared. Luckily, it was a small guy, and Denki could haul him over his shoulder. They shot through the rubble, using one of the fallen pieces as a ramp and soaring through the air. The landing was even rougher, but they managed to leave the robot's path.
Denki was running dangerously low and felt the whole world spinning around him. He spent the next few minutes sprawling on the ground, trying not to puke. The symptoms of this stage were the same as being completely drunk, according to the tests the hospital ran. He was pretty sure he heard a huge bang in the middle of his rest, but he chose to ignore it.
He was still years away from the drinking age, but he was already familiar with the feeling of drunkenness. He swore to himself he would never drink, even when he was old enough. The fact symptoms of hangover immediately followed after it made the whole ordeal even worse and made him swear off all alcohol preemptively. The fact he wasn't dehydrated and drinking a lot of fluid didn't help was the cherry on top.
After a while, a loud shouting threatened to split his head in half.
"It's all over!"
After a few minutes, he felt a finger prodding him.
"Hey man, are you okay?"
As he opened his eyes, a worried Kirishima was leaning over him. The kid he helped was nowhere to be found.
"Yeah, just overused my quirk. Give me ten minutes, and I can stand."
Kirishima sat down next to him, sitting so he didn't need to raise his head.
"So, how did you do?"
"I got around fifty points. Would have got more, but some bastards with ranged quirks kept stealing my points. No one likes a kill stealer," his voice was strangely slurred, and Kirishima picked up on that.
"Are you sure you are okay, man? You don't sound so good."
"Yeah, yeah," Denki waved his hand. "All perfectly normal. How did you do?"
"Not so good," Kirishima answered. "I only got like 39 of them. I could punch through them fast enough, but I couldn't find enough of them with everyone going for them."
They talked about the exam for a few minutes before Recovery Girl arrived. By this time, the worst of his condition passed, and he was simply nauseous and twitching.
Recovery Girl's lips extended, and she kissed Denki on his forehead. The symptoms of his quirk overuse immediately vanished, but he was left tired and hungry.
After getting some candy from the Youthful Heroine, Denki headed home.