As it turned out, Power Packer did most of the carrying. The guy was crazy strong, and his mobility was on par with Izuku's without Float. He hooked a couple of Blackwhips under Packer's arms at his insistence and hung on his back as he leapt from building to building. From what Izuku could tell, Power Packer's Quirk worked a lot like Nirengeki Shoda's Twin Impact, in that he could enhance his power after a trigger. For Packer, Izuku figured the trigger was any kind of movement that made contact with another surface. When he jumped, nothing happened immediately, but a heartbeat later, they rocketed off into the sky and came down on the nearest rooftop, where they repeated the process. It was much more powerful than Shoda's Quirk, though Izuku was never going to say that to the boy's face. From what Izuku knew, Shoda couldn't regulate the strength of his secondary impacts, but Power Packer displayed a degree of control over how far they were launched each time. Even on the longest leaps, Izuku could feel that he wasn't putting his all into it just yet.

About halfway to their destination, Izuku decided he was getting stiff crouched on the giant's back like that, and flung himself off Packer's shoulders at the peak of his jump, letting Float take him as far as it could before he allowed One for All to embrace him in the halo of sparking power, Full Cowling style. He smiled down at Packer, who was looking up at him silently. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking, since he wore that motorcycle-style helmet and didn't say anything, but his body language shifted, and he launched himself twice as far as he had been previously, almost like he was showing off. Izuku's smile widened and he used Air Force to propel himself, following Packer further into the city as they raced each other to their destination.

While flying, Izuku thought about why he'd been assigned to Packer if they both could just move like this anyway. Was it Skywalker's idea of hazing? It didn't really matter, but it was odd. That seemed to be the throughline with these kids. None of them were more than a year older than him, but they had a different vibe, like they were closer on the scale to pro heroes than they were to him, which didn't make sense. What kind of training did the Commission do to make these kids turn out like this? Again, it didn't truly matter, but it did grate on Izuku, like there was something he wasn't understanding even though it was right under his nose. He frowned as he watched Power Packer outpace him for brief moments at the beginning of his jumps, and then fall back behind as he lost momentum, rather than sustaining consistent flight like Izuku was capable of with Air Force as part of his toolkit. That did feel good, being able to really fly, since Hitoshi and Katsuki had previously made a joke of his insistence that floating wasn't flying, because he'd been unable to generate his own propulsion while in the air before All Might had shown him this new trick. He smiled again as he thought of how grateful he was for All Might's guidance. He wouldn't have gotten anywhere without him.

Izuku and Power Packer touched down on a building across the street from what looked like an apartment complex. It was the building Pointer had pointed out to them — he was never going to admit that he just then understood her name — but it looked like a regular building in a regular city. It was actually kind of eerie how normal everything looked. Izuku looked around, and sure enough, it was the tallest building around by a storey. He could see the other two buildings Pointer had marked as villain hideouts, peeking out like they were trying to be seen. He figured it was so that the actors for the villains in each hideout could see if the others were attacked, and adjust how they behaved according to what they saw. Izuku smiled, knowing that around that time, the other pairs were approaching the other two buildings, and in a few seconds, fighting would break out across the city at the same time, more or less. He looked forward to it, but had something else to do first. Izuku had to figure out a way to communicate with Packer if he really wasn't going to speak.

"Um, I hope this doesn't cross any boundaries, but are you mute, or do you just not want to talk to me?" Izuku asked in the most honest way he could. There was no other way to learn what he needed to know to move forward with this.

Power Packer nodded and held two fingers up to where his lips would be if he weren't wearing the featureless helmet, and slid them along the dark shell until they ran off the surface of it. Izuku realised he was confirming he was mute, and not that he just didn't want to talk to Izuku very much. Smiling, Izuku sighed. Of course it was good to know Packer didn't just dislike him immediately, but there was the other reason — Izuku actually had ways to communicate with him now.

"I have a mute friend, so I know sign language. We can sign, if you can as well," Izuku said.

Power Packer suddenly stiffened. He put his hands together and shakily signed something, like he was out of practice. 'I can sign, but it takes too long when we're doing hero things, so I don't often.'

"Right, I get that. I think it's good to know, anyway, that you can talk to me if you want," Izuku said. He wasn't sure this guy got to participate in a lot of conversation if these Commission kids didn't know each other's names, Quirks, and potentially even more crucial things that helped form friendships. If they had to be in full uniform all the time when they were together, it was possible they'd never seen Packer's face before. That had to be hard. "Do the others know how to sign?"

'Some. Skywalker is most fluent, but Echo and Strider took the time to learn enough to hold a conversation. I don't think Pointer cares all too much. She says the others can translate for her.'

That was rough. Izuku was really not liking Pointer, and was liking Echo and Strider more and more as he learned more about the three of them. He wondered about Skywalker, though. The guy seemed like a big mixed bag. One second he was reprimanding Echo for wanting to help her teammate, the next he was learning sign language to talk to Packer. Then he was hazing Izuku by making him think he had to carry Packer, and then he was acting all helpful about the rules like he had been when he'd explained their privacy policy. He was strange, contradictory and unnervingly confident. Izuku couldn't think about all that while he had an exam to pass, though, so he put it out of his mind. He wished he could get an answer soon, though, because the way they all behaved was creepy to Izuku. They truly believed there was nothing wrong with not knowing each other's faces and names. They thought that was normal.

"What do you say I hit them from the top floor and you come to meet me from the bottom? If we take out any guys we run into along the way, we'll knock this place off the map in five minutes flat," Izuku said. Power Packer nodded, and Izuku smiled.

One for All electrified every atom of Izuku's body. Emerald lightning flickered around him, filling his ears with a buzzing noise. Twenty percent of his full power filled every crack and crevice in him, and he crouched down. Izuku pushed off the building and was sure he left cracks in the rooftop as he launched himself upwards, touching down on the top of the building they were about to clear with a soft thud of his shoes with the help of Float. He looked around for a rooftop entrance to the building, but there was none. He guessed he'd have to do it the All Might way. Izuku leapt up into the air, like a comet in the night sky trailing crackling electrical discharge, and didn't let Float catch him as he came back down. He pounded the rooftop with a two-handed slam, and as it connected, he had the courage to do what All Might had told him to do back when he'd first gotten One for All.

"SMASH!" Izuku screamed as he landed in a large, unfurnished room among the rubble. He felt a rush as he said that, like he could really live up to All Might's ideal, and this time he didn't have to force the grin that emerged as his feet touched the ground and he looked around the room with what he was sure was a challenging look in his eyes.

The room was full of people. They all wore black bodysuits with white armoured segments, and the masks were outfitted with six teardrops of a glassy material, like many glittering eyes. That gave Izuku some pause, but he recovered quickly. They all wore a device on their wrists, a gauntlet with holes in it, and Izuku figured that they could fire off some projectile from a distance. All the faux-villains were stumbling in the aftermath of his entrance, and Izuku took advantage of that. He used his speed and rushed toward one end of the room and started punching and kicking all the villains on that side. Some of them put up resistance, but most went down in a single blow. He was hitting them with about fifteen percent, keeping his arms safe from breaking while making the most of One for All's power. By his rough count, there had been about twenty conscious faux-villains in the room when he started, and he managed to take down five or six before the others recovered and tried shooting at him with their support items.

!

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The gauntlets shot out a sticky wad of half-dried cement. It dried quickly, as evidenced by the lumps of solid rock that jutted out from the walls and floor as he dodged them. It was trivial with Danger Sense, almost like a dance. His body almost slipped into muscle memory, like when he'd been practising for his class's song and dance performance at the school festival with Ashido and the others. The varied pings Danger Sense was giving him let him know when and where he was about to get hit, and that let him know how to twist and turn his body in order to avoid the projectiles. He'd recently come up with a way to categorise Danger Sense's different outputs, because of course he had, according to Hitoshi. He'd only ever experienced four different 'levels' of how intensely Danger Sense could warn him of an attack. He guessed the lowest intensity was for minor things, punches that'd bruise him but not break a bone. The second was most common for knives and small cuts. The third was where Danger Sense's prickling sensation at the back of his head started to hurt, and it was reserved for really dangerous things, like Katsuki's explosions. The fourth almost stunned Izuku too much to react, and he'd only felt that twice. Once was when Decay had stripped him of the skin on his right arm. The other had been when Yui Kodai had sent tonnes of sharp, heavy metal projectiles at him that would've crushed anyone without his strength and durability. It very nearly crushed her, which was something he regretted not stopping.

That was all to say that his Danger Sense warnings never went above a Category Two with these faux-villains. It was easy enough to dodge their fire, but there was something bugging Izuku as he dodged around the cement clumps. He took down roughly half of the faux-villains before he was forced to dodge back and forth, zipping between two walls at the far end of the room and making zig-zagging arcs of lightning while they fired on him from the other end. He couldn't find the best moment to slip between their shots and get between them so he could take advantage of their close proximity. It reminded him of what Aizawa had said in his advice to Ochako after their joint training with Class 1-B. The enemy won't always give you an opening. If you don't see one, make on. He was right. He'd also said something to that effect in his evaluation of Izuku's performance then. Izuku couldn't sit around and wait for something to happen. He had to be proactive. That's why he was taking this exam in the first place! He had to act.

Izuku bounced up to a high corner at his end of the room and leapt directly across to the other end above the faux-villains. A chorus of shocked cries came from below, but Izuku didn't stop to feel good about coming up with a good shock tactic. He pushed himself down into the middle of their little pack and released Smokescreen through the needle-thin soles in his shoes so that the thick purple smog trailed behind him as he fell to the ground. He kicked one of them in the back so hard that they flew across the room, but Izuku didn't see if he hit the far wall or not. He immediately released a fuller cloud of Smokescreen, the twisting plume rushing out from his feet and consuming everything in sight. Izuku could almost feel the shift as Danger Sense stopped pinging attacks and started pinging the people around him, like sonar. He knew where everyone in the room was. That faux-villain had hit the wall. Izuku felt the grin slide back onto his face.

He turned to one side of the group of faux-villains he'd put himself in the middle of, and held his closed fists out at them. He let Blackwhip go, curling around the spaces where his Quirk told him there were people and grabbing onto them like oozing ropes with their own will. He then pushed them away and slammed them into the wall, knocking half of them out on impact, judging by the grunts and groans of pain that remained afterward. Izuku then let Float take him as he pulled Blackwhip back in, flinging the conscious and unconscious bodies of the faux-villains toward their still standing comrades without discrimination. He flipped onto his feet as he released Float, and grounded himself for the finisher, the crackling lightning intensifying as he brought One for All to twenty percent. Izuku brought his knee up to his chest, anchoring himself to the ground so he wouldn't lose balance with Blackwhip, which emerged from his calf and snaked around his leg before hitching itself to the floor, and kicked with all his power.

Smokescreen was immediately dispersed, the lilac fog rushing away from the violent winds that flew when Izuku's kick met the air in front of him. That's how he saw the remaining faux-villains, the six or seven goons still stumbling from having been bowled over by their friends, be picked up by the air current generated by Izuku's kick and slam into the wall just as their allies had, falling to the ground and revealing small spider webs of cracks in the concrete where each one of them had hit it. As the last of the Smokescreen escaped up through the hole Izuku had made in the ceiling, he stood there, untethering himself and keeping a defensive stance as he waited to make sure none of the faux-villains got back up. They didn't.

From there, it was easy to take out the faux-villains in small groups. Izuku would isolate them with Blackwhip and Smokescreen, and then knock them out before they could fight back. He cleared three floors that way, clearing rooms full of men on each level, until he met back up with Power Packer on the third floor. Packer was just coming up the stairwell when Izuku was finishing up with the last faux-villains on that floor, and was panting and covered in patches of dried cement. He was still standing, just winded, seemingly. Izuku's breath had escaped him as well somewhere along the line, and he allowed Packer all the time he needed while the two of them regained their cool.

"Did you see the bomb anywhere down there?" Izuku asked.

'No. There was nothing but bad guys on my floors. I'm guessing you didn't find it either, then,' Packer signed.

"I don't think it's in this building, unless you saw a way into a basement from ground level," Izuku said. Packer shook his head in reply. "Then we got a dud."

He gestured for Power Packer to follow him and ran back up the stairs. They got to the top floor and leapt through the hole he'd made, gaining a vantage point in scouting the other two suspected bomb locations. One for All left him like a long sigh after a hard day of training, the crackling of the power within him sparking before going silent completely. Izuku pressed his finger to the earpiece he'd been handed by All Might as he'd donned his costume this morning.

"This is Nexus. The tower to the east is a decoy. It just had goons inside. How are things at the other two towers?" Izuku asked.

"We found the big bad, but … we could really use some help at the northern tower!" Strider yelled through the buzz of the earpiece.

"We'll be there in a minute," Izuku said, eyes wide as he assumed he met Power Packer's eyes through the helmet. He signed off with a frown.

The two of them took off immediately. Izuku restarted the engine of One for All in his chest and pushed himself to twenty percent right off the bat. He could technically handle that kind of power, but it was hard to go from zero percent all the way up to his absolute maximum. It was always easier to start at ten, or even fifteen percent. The greenish crackling resumed around him and he pushed off the rooftop toward the north side of the replica city, using Float and Air Force to continue his flight as fast as possible, Power Packer falling behind after a block or so. Izuku flew faster than he'd normally be comfortable with. At a certain speed, his brain stopped processing details and just streaks of colour across his retina, but it was a straight shot to the northern tower, so he figured it was more or less safe to do so. It wasn't like Training Ground Gamma, where it was an intentionally designed maze of industrial piping. A big, open space like the skies above a city was just what he'd needed to test out how fast he could really fly, and it was exhilarating. The world turned into a smudge of colour, and the wind threatened to tear Izuku's cowl off his face, but his costume held up under the air resistance. G-force was something that he hadn't put a whole lot of thought into when considering his potential top speed, but Izuku felt his limbs lag behind his centre of gravity as he propelled himself forward with Air Force. It was something he'd have to get used to, or maybe something his body would simply adjust to as it got used to higher percentages of One for All. This Quirk was really something else.

Izuku reached the northern tower in what he estimated was about forty seconds. That was likely a new personal top speed, but Izuku couldn't focus on that right at that moment. He crashed through the window wall of the top floor, assuming that that's where the fighting would be, and was lucky to be correct. Broken glass rained down around him as he came to a stop on the floor, taking stock of the scene before him. Strider was flitting around the room in her busts of super-speed, but she looked pale, like she could collapse any second. Pointer was nowhere to be seen, which was probably for the best, because Izuku didn't see how even he could take this villain on. He froze as he realised that Gang Orca was the one playing the big bad in this test, taking the insanely fast but hopelessly weak punches from Strider as she zoomed past him. The iconic suit, the tie that was often mistaken for a long tongue, the cloak that billowed in Strider's wake, the glaring red eyes and the orca mutation. Yep, that was Gang Orca, and Izuku was screwed. He was unaffected by Strider's passing hits and kicks, which reminded Izuku of the way Tenya Iida would fight, and Strider was faster than Izuku was at twenty percent, so he figured he wasn't going to get anywhere if he was under fifteen percent for this fight. Sweat ran down Izuku's back — he was about to go Plus Ultra on the number ten hero! He was dead already!

Pushing through that, Izuku surveyed the scene. Strider had been about to attack, but she got clear of Gang Orca, coming to a stop and falling to one knee as she struggled for breath. She'd apparently seen Izuku and realised she could take a break, which took the words right out of his mouth. He realised in that moment, as he looked at Strider gasping and choking on air, what her weakness must be. He'd read of a hero before who had a similar Quirk, O'Clock, and his problem was that the oxygen in his blood was consumed so quickly by moving and thinking so fast that he had to take breaks between using his Quirk. Strider's Quirk must have worked the same way, consuming the oxygen in her body to fuel her bursts of super-speed, and so that was why she always collapsed after an extended use of her power. Izuku felt bad for racing her, now. Had Gang Orca stood and watched as she'd done that to herself, just to buy time for the rest of them to back her up? Izuku didn't feel very afraid of the false villain anymore.

He launched forward, pushing his body to the absolute limit of how much One for All it could take. Izuku flew at Gang Orca and tried to hit him with a kick, but the faux-villain simply blocked it with his armoured forearm, though the metallic guard cracked under Izuku's power. He pushed himself off Gang Orca's raised arm gently, barely putting any strength into it at all, so that Float would carry him up. He twisted in mid-air, his feet hitting the ceiling, and anchored himself there with Blackwhip through the soles of his feet, through the same mechanism for releasing Smokescreen. Izuku couldn't believe he hadn't thought of that before, but he was content with figuring it out in the moment during a fight where it really mattered, rather than in a safe place. He then caught Gang Orca's shoulders in Blackwhip, which seemed to surprise the hero. Distantly he realised it was shocking and bizarre to see someone using multiple Quirks, much less someone his age using them the way he did. His conscious mind was focused on the combat, though, and he used all his power to yank Gang Orca off the ground while preserving his leverage with his Blackwhip anchors. Izuku then pushed off the ceiling and fell toward Gang Orca, sinking a twenty percent "SMASH!" into his jaw as they met in the air.

Gang Orca slammed into the ground and roared. The Blackwhips hadn't held onto him as he'd been thrown back down by Izuku's hit, so he was free again. Izuku sighed in annoyance as he let go of Float and landed on the ground a dozen paces from Gang Orca. He had no clue where he'd gotten the nerve to face the tenth top hero in Japan like this, but then he caught another glimpse of Strider, laying on the floor barely having recovered from her Quirk's drawback. He liked her, he liked Power Packer and Echo, and even if he had mixed thoughts about the others, he thought they could be friends if he had gotten the chance to really get to know them. He felt the same as if he was fighting alongside his best friends at UA. Izuku realised it didn't really matter if he thought some of these Commission kids were a little too good at deflecting questions or if they were too impersonal for his tastes. They were heroes in training just like him, and that was what he cared about. They were brothers and sisters in that. Izuku took a deep breath and reined himself in, alongside his annoyance at how long it had taken him to come to a conclusion, how distrusting he'd been of Skywalker and Pointer initially. He calmed himself, as he knew his Quirks reacted to his feelings. He didn't need to be breaking any bones or awakening any new Quirks in this test.

It was then, as he thought he'd had a brief reprieve from the combat as Gang Orca had recovered from his initial attack, that Izuku's entire body went numb and he fell to the floor, useless. A high-pitched ringing in his ears, almost too high to hear, drowned out the thoughts in his head and replaced them with things like 'OW!' and 'PAIN!' and 'THIS SUCKS!' Izuku had experienced something like this before, but only once. It had been during his first term's final exam, where Aizawa had pitted the entire class in two teams of ten against each other. Izuku had been blasted with the full power of Jiro's heartbeat attack, the wall of sound feeling like his entire body had been put through a paper shredder, or like little knives had targeted every atom of his body and cut him at the speed of sound. This was like that, only a hundred times worse, yet also better, somehow. It hurt so badly that Izuku's entire body went numb, so he didn't actually feel a lot after that first big flood of agony. His eyes could still move, and he fixed them on the only one capable of an attack like that. Gang Orca's hypersonic attacks were his iconic ultimate move, but Izuku had never imagined how it must have felt to be the target of one of his fight-ending attacks. His limbs wouldn't obey his commands, and his thoughts were slow and half-formed, like Izuku had fallen victim to Hitoshi's Brainwashing Quirk. His impaired mind only had enough time to wonder if this meant he lost before Gang Orca's shadow passed over him, the hero living up to his reputation as consistent third place in the annual Heroes Who Look Like Villains contest.

Power Packer chose that moment to soar through the open curtain window and give Gang Orca a sucker punch across the jaw, which sent him tumbling across the floor half a second after the hit landed. Packer ran after Gang Orca, and Strider with him as she finally struggled to her feet and took off in a burst of speed. Izuku felt a pit form in his stomach. He was stupid to get caught in that attack. He didn't know how he could've avoided it, but if he'd paid attention he would've noticed some tell that gave away that Gang Orca had been about to strike. He tried to recall everything he knew about Gang Orca's Quirk, but thinking fast was like trying to sprint through waist deep water. The hypersonic attack he'd used on Izuku wasn't talked about in detail a lot, for obvious reasons, but there was a consensus online; it affected anyone within about ten metres of Gang Orca, but only if he was facing his target directly; the paralysis lasted about a minute, more if the target is already fatigued. Not a lot to go on. Izuku bared his teeth and couldn't help getting angry. He felt the core of frustration within himself crack as a smoky tendril snaked out of his gloves' release mechanism and began to wrap itself around his arms like a dog's tail wagging. Izuku glanced down and realised that Blackwhip was responding to his anger again, like it had all the way back when he'd manifested the Quirk for the first time, which was something Izuku had thought he'd moved past. Then he realised what he should have initially, that his Quirks still worked. He put so much time and effort into his 'muscle' visualisation in order to get better at using his Quirks that Izuku sometimes forgot that they weren't literal muscles, so of course they were unaffected by Gang Orca's hypersonic paralysis attack. He could still help with Blackwhip, Smokescreen and maybe Float, if he was creative.

Izuku rose off the ground, his limp body tumbling higher and higher into the air until his back hit the ceiling. He now had a solid line of sight to the whole room and he hadn't needed to turn his head once. These powers really were the gift that kept on giving. Izuku silently thanked Nana Shimura and the rest of the past users of One for All, as well as Tsu if the move he was thinking of still worked, before getting to work. He waited until Gang Orca was directly under him before he pushed his tongue out as far as he could, and Blackwhip surged out from that motion. It would've been weak had Izuku not been so frustrated with himself, which gave Blackwhip the strength to entangle itself around Gang Orca and keep him in place long enough for Power Packer to launch a flurry of attacks against him at the same time that Strider approached and did the same from the hero's flank. A series of lightning-quick jabs buckled Gang Orca's knees, and five punches from Power Packer, each seemingly doubling the strength of the last, knocked Gang Orca out of Izuku's Blackwhip and sent him skidding across the floor and toward the ledge where Izuku had broken the window for his entrance.

Feeling slowly returned to his body as Izuku watched Gang Orca rise to his feet. By the time the hero was standing tall, Izuku had control of his body back. He fell to the floor, Full Cowling enveloping him in its signature flashes of electrical discharge as he descended and landed across the room from his teammates. He wouldn't usually consider that a good decision, but he had a plan. Izuku didn't take his eyes off as he addressed his allies.

"Guys, Gang Orca's hypersonic attack works on people he's facing directly. He can't get all of us at once if we're spread out enough!" Izuku said.

"Got it!" Strider called, immediately zipping away from Power Packer.

"Hmm, you're strong and smart. They usually warn us about kids like you," Gang Orca said. It was the first time Izuku had heard him speak in person, and his bassy voice sent shivers down the fanboy's spine. Izuku frowned, remembering that he wasn't technically supposed to be taking this exam. He put it out of his mind.

"Guys! I found the bomb!" Pointer's voice blared in Izuku's ear. "I need, like, five more minutes."

Izuku knew that Pointer was somewhere below in the same building as the rest of them. He also knew that they had about fifteen minutes left in the test. Could they keep Gang Orca busy for five minutes? It had only been about two minutes since he'd crashed through that window, but Izuku already felt dead tired. He'd have to suck it up and do what he had to in order for them to pass this exam. Izuku sighed heavily, and put his hands up to fight.

There was no warning before a blur of black and blue crashed into Gang Orca and pushed him away from the ledge and over the three heroes in training. The hero tumbled to the floor and struggled to his feet once again, and Izuku watched as the blur stopped in mid-air, revealing Skywalker standing on nothing above his teammates.

"What'd I miss?" the blond boy asked, grinning broadly.

"I have five minutes to beat you brats, that's what," Gang Orca said, his glowing red eyes making Izuku freeze even over the distance between them. "Don't think I can't hear your radio transmissions."

"Alright, then!" Skywalker said, like he'd just been told he'd won a prize. "I guess we're really gonna have to step up our game, gang."

Izuku felt an idea assembling itself in his head, but he needed more time. He brought his hands up from where they'd fallen in his shock. They had five minutes.

They could hold out that long. They had to.

Author's Note

POWER PACKER — JOSU OSUHIKU

QUIRK: KINETIC BURST

Josu, when he lands a hit, can choose to add more force to said hit. This scales non-linearly, so his Burst 5 isn't five times his base strength, but five times his Burst 4, which is four times his Burst 3, and so on. He can get crazy powerful, on par with One for All's mid-range if he really pushes it, though his resistance to the force he can put out is less potent the more powerful the kinetic burst is.