And now here's part 2 of the QAT. Not really much else to tell you.

Special thanks to Writermakeshift for beta-reading.


XVI. My High School Life (Again), Part II

BANG!

As soon as the gunshot went off, Subaru bolted forward with Full Cowl, using the boost from the Quirk amplifying his initial stride from his runner's position, and immediately left his opponent in the dust. Without hesitation, he kept running towards the finish line, and even spared a glance behind him to see the figure not even having been a quarter of the way through yet.

Because the power stockpile of One for All granted him super speed (sorry, Īda—ended up stealing your niche, too) alongside the super strength and whatever the hell he did during the entrance exam, he initially thought it'd be like everyone else moving at slow motion like how a lot of 'old' comic books and movies made it out to be, but in reality, it wasn't really that at all.

The best comparison he could think of would be like how with shooting games or playing an instrument, you could have enough cognitive and fine-tuned muscle memory to the point where you could do a really fast motion and still be accurate. And so while he was able to think and move much faster, he was still seeing everything move in real-time (with none of it ever seeming to slow down, if that made sense).

As he crossed through the finish line of the running track and passed the robots standing by both sides, Subaru slowly came to a stop, before releasing his hold on Full Cowl altogether.

"1.08 seconds!" the robot behind him chirped, and he couldn't help but let out a low whistle from hearing the time. He then turned around just in time to see Katsuki finish, and watched as the other boy ceased the constant explosions that were propelling him forward, slowing to a stop right ahead of Subaru.

"Okay, I already knew you're way faster, but damn—I was basically a snail there."

Subaru chuckled. "That kinda sounds like a 'you' problem."

"Whatever. You're lucky we're friends," Katsuki replied with a shake of his head, before he lightly punched Subaru's shoulder and started jogging away. "I'm gonna go get some water."

Having now found himself without someone to talk to, Subaru checked the crowd of his classmates for his friends, but between seeing just about everyone staring at him slack-jawed and noticing one Ashido Mina waving at him enthusiastically, he decided to just go for the latter, walking over to the girl.

"Yeah, I don't think anyone's gonna be topping that anytime soon," she began, as he stopped right in front of her. "One second you were at the starting line, and then—" She made a noise that sounded like a whispered 'keeooh!' and a gesture of a fast sweeping motion with her arm. "—you were on the other side, just like that! That was, like, pretty insane."

"Ah, thanks..." Subaru replied, as he sheepishly grinned and rubbed the back of his neck.

He really wasn't going to be getting used to getting all this praise any time soon. Or even for physically being one of the strongest people he knew.

(Say, just how fast could he blitz the Bowel Hunter with just twenty-five percent? Would that have overpowered her cheat-level regeneration?)

This was...honestly getting increasingly more difficult to not let this go to his head.

"So what exactly is your Quirk?"

"Hm?" Subaru looked back at Ashido, her question setting off more than a few alarm bells in his head. "What do you mean?"

"Eijirō told me about it—he said you had telekinesis or something like that, but I'm pretty sure going all green and sparkly doesn't have anything to do with it."

"Oh. Uh, that's because my Quirk isn't actually telekinesis." Technically the truth. "I thought it was that when I first got it, but I did some training for the entrance exam to get stronger, and then a lot of other stuff happened, so now I call it..." His eyes darted throughout the crowd, from the small groups of people huddled together, until they finally settled on the purple balls that made up Mineta's head.

"...Energy Cluster. As in my Quirk is actually a versatile kind of energy my body can...express in different ways?" With the way he ended that last sentence as a question, Ashido just stared at him in response, looking like she didn't believe him a single bit. "If...if that makes sense. I'm just going off of what the doctor told me."

Ashido simply continued staring at him for a moment, before she finally backed off and stepped back some. "Yeah, I guess it does. You must've been really surprised, finding out something you knew for years was actually a whole other thing the whole time...not that I would know," she said with a chuckle. And with the silence that followed quickly becoming awkward, Subaru immediately understood why.

Pink skin. Thin, yellow horns protruding from her head. Eyes that were almost entirely black with yellow irises.

With her entire appearance being classified as part of the heteromorphic category (or more commonly, the mutant-type), probably because of her skin changing to accommodate her Quirk, Ashido had to have grown up with way more than her fair share of bullying, and he wasn't talking about the dumb, almost-teasing kind. Hell, with those horns of hers, it absolutely would've been much worse for her in a western country.

("The Witch! The Witch of Envy has returned! Everyone run for your lives!")

Yeah. Not exactly a good look for Japan, in his eyes.

Even when the country was more-or-less completely accepting of more foreigners moving to the country, there was still a whole lot of issues it still had to deal with, almost all them being related to Quirks, one way or another. If you plucked any other Japanese person from the twenty-first century society and exposed them to the hidden layers of the twenty-second, they probably would have been left horrified and demanded to be sent back.

(Ah, but wait, this was getting awkward now, wasn't it? Quick, Subaru, change the subject!)

"So, uh, how do you know Kirishima?" he asked.

"Oh, we're pretty close," Ashido replied nonchalantly. "We grew up in the same city, and we went to the same middle school, that kinda thing."

Oh, so like him and Katsuki, then. That made sense.

...

But wait, if they knew each other for that long, then wouldn't they be—

"Ashido! Aoyama! You're up next!" Aizawa suddenly called out, interrupting Subaru's train of thought.

"Well, duty calls," she said, clicking her tongue and giving him a two-fingered salute, before walking towards the running track. And as he was left alone once again, Subaru tried to remember what he had been thinking about, but couldn't seem to, no matter how much he tried.

Eh. Might as well go look for Uraraka and the others in the meantime.


As he watched Class 1-A undergo the Quirk-based aptitude tests Aizawa-kun was putting them through, Toshinori couldn't help but maybe be just a little proud of how easy of a time his three pupils were having through each one. Even though Uraraka-shōjo and Bakugō-shōnen had showcased some of their potential with her ball throw's infinite score and his overall high consistency, they were still overshadowed by Midoriya-shōnen.

(Okay, he knew that as their mentor, he shouldn't be so biased when he trained all three of them, but like, this was his successor, here—could you blame him for having a favorite student? It wasn't like he was going to tell anyone, anyway.)

Ah, but after watching them handle the Zero-Pointer in their own ways, and then taking all top three spots in the practical entrance exam...he should seriously consider putting this on a résumé somewhere. All Might, former Symbol of Peace, trainer of three of the next top Heroes—

"Why are you here, Yagi?"

Toshinori's (de-powered, thankfully) fingers dug into the corner of the wall he had been hiding behind, as he resisted the instinctive urge to jump at sound of Aizawa-kun's sudden voice behind him, because as a general (self-imposed) rule, the Number One Hero and Symbol of Peace did not flinch.

"Ah, nothing much, really," he lied smoothly, turning around to face the other man. "I just wanted to see how you were doing with your class. But, uh, ahem—did you really have to be so hard on them on the first day?"

Aizawa-kun was silent for a few moments, before he finally answered. "I know Yamada told you about Shirakumo."

"...he did, yes."

"Then you know why. It's for their own good—every single year, I always see the newest first-years with the same attitude. They think they're hot shit just because they got some points on an exam specifically tailored towards flashy combat Quirks. If what I do can at least immediately tone their egos down, then it's worth any and all resentment they'll ever have for me."

That...was a compelling argument, Toshinori had to admit. Danger and risking one's life came with the job, of course, but a lot of the time, many new Heroes were simply just unaware of their own mortality, with some even treating it as simple of a profession as the next. Granted, this was partly because of his own efforts to become a public symbol, but like...it was in the word hero, wasn't it?

"I'm guessing you're here about Midoriya, then," Aizawa-kun continued. The simple finality of his statement left no room for Toshinori to counter with an excuse, much as he wished otherwise.

"You got me, he admitted with a chuckle, sheepishly rubbing the back of his neck. "I'll admit, I was rather curious about him myself."

After the spectacular display (read: shitshow) that was Midoriya-shōnen that very clearly looked nothing like Short-Range Telekinesis or One for All's power stockpile, the headmaster ended up having to pull rank and threaten to stop the exam right then and there just to get everyone to calm down. But even then, there were still many who looked like they really wanted to know.

'It was very nearly a disaster,' would probably have to be the biggest understatement of Toshinori's entire career as a Pro Hero.

So now the secret his seven predecessors had fought and literally died for in order to keep hidden was now at risk of being exposed to each and every one of his work colleagues, all because of a freak occurrence no one expected. First the injury, and now this. Where the hell did he go wrong to get this level of bad luck?

"Yeah, well, he still hasn't done anything like what he did with the Zero-Pointer, and I'm not exactly sure on what needs to be recreated for him to do it again," Aizawa-kun said, showing Toshinori some slowed-down footage of Midoriya-shōnen and his now-iconic Full Cowl blitzing through the fifty-meter dash. "And at this point, I don't think it'd be smart to force it out of him anytime soon."

"You have a point there," Toshinori replied, nodding. Even with a month of almost-daily Quirk practice before U.A.'s start, there hadn't been any progress at all in getting Midoriya-shōnen to reawaken his black tendrils, so there was obviously some sort of requirement that wasn't being met.

But just what could it possibly be?

"Anyway—" Toshinori audibly clasped his hands together as he started to walk back towards the teachers' office. "—I won't keep you from your class for any longer, so I'll leave you to it. Try not to make anyone cry now, all right?"

"You're not the homeroom teacher here, Yagi."

Toshinori simply laughed in response without turning around. "True enough."


With One for All, Subaru had almost zero chance of ever getting into the hero course with just the use of his Authorities. But since he did actually have the Quirk now, a part of himself was now feeling like it was unfair just how much of an easier time he was having compared to people who've always had their Quirks, ever since they first got them at four or five.

But what exactly was the alternative here? Just taking the General Education course and having to live a relatively-normal life as a salaryman with maybe some vigilantism on the side?

Hell no. He threw away any and all prospects of a normal life when he lacked the conviction to run away with Rem.

Natsuki Subaru may have been extremely weak and needed to rely on Return by Death and convincing his friends to do things differently, but as Midoriya Izuku, he was, quite frankly, absolutely done with playing a 'support role'. He had the ability to make actual change with One for All, and he couldn't get started on that without first making his mark in class today.

And so for the rest of the aptitude tests, he continued to prove again and again just how much of child's play it was for Subaru. After placing third overall in the softball throw, blowing the entire rest of the competition out of the water in the fifty-meter dash, he had half a mind to just go up to Aizawa and ask what else he had in store for them, as they moved on to the next test.

The standing long jump? Easily cleared without so much as a sweat.

The repeated side steps? Outdone only by Mineta, and by a fairly narrow margin, too—the guy just kept bouncing back and forth between two individual walls made by his Quirk like a ping pong ball in between the paddle and the table. Subaru with twenty-five percent was very fast, don't get him wrong, but there seemed to be a whole thing about Mineta's purple balls adding more and more energy for each bounce, meaning he very quickly got fast enough to go past Subaru's own speed.

After everyone else finished that test, Aizawa then had the class go into the gym for a grip test. And looking back on it, that may have been when the problems started.


Grip Test

After walking over to the robot that was standing beside a yellow container, Subaru reached in and picked up one of the grip tests—an almost rectangular-looking piece of metal with its handle at the bottom being extended by three slightly-exposed thick springs (the part you actually had to grip—haha, funny innuendo), and a small, blank screen right above it.

He then made his way back to the part of the gym where his friends were standing, and was met with the sight of Uraraka and Mineta trying their damnedest to get a good score.

"Come on...!" he heard her strain out, her face of nothing but pure, unadulterated determination contrasting with Mineta's silent but pretty comical 'battle cry' face as he squatted and held the outer part of his own grip test with both of his hands. After another moment or so watching both of them strain, the two finally relaxed and took a look at their scores, and Subaru also made note of their different reactions.

"Oh, nice, I got 33.9!" Uraraka exclaimed in delight, her face lighting up.

"Aw, man," Mineta also said at around the same time. "Didn't even get past forty..."

"I think that's quite an all right score, Mineta-kun," Īda told him consolingly. "You still have the other tests to prove yourself." He suddenly craned his neck in Subaru's direction as he finally noticed him walking up, and gave him a wave. "Ah, Midoriya-kun—have you gotten your score yet?"

The others around him turned to look at Subaru, who waved back awkwardly in response.

"No, but let me just..." Only a moment passed as Full Cowl activated, and Subaru very gingerly held the test in his hands as he lifted it up to hold it near his chest. He even decided to wrap Invisible Providence around the handle for good measure, and once his hands had gotten to position, he gave it the tiniest of squeezes.

38.4 kg

(Okay, looking good so far. Just need to give it some more, now...)

56.0 kg...143 kg...287 kg...

The numbers continued to rise as Subaru slowly (in his point of view, at least) continued to force his hand to close, and at some point after the scale hit the five hundred mark, the numbers it displayed started to climb increasingly faster and faster while he kept squeezing

A resounding metallic crunch! sound emanated from his hand as he finally squeezed the handle with even more force. And it was here that his hand fully closed into a fist, not only completely compressing the handle in its entirety, but also completely crushing it like it was made out of cardboard. The rest of the grip test immediately dropped to the ground afterwards, and was now nothing but a broken mess whose screen continued to flash useless until it finally sputtered out of power.

And given the sudden bout of silence throughout the entire gym, it didn't go anywhere near unnoticed.

"You...you just crushed it." The voice came from Kaminari Denki, who Subaru had seen walking by, but was now staring at him, his face nothing short of gobsmacked.

Well, shit.

For a split second, Subaru hoped the sound of him breaking the grip test didn't get very far beyond Kaminari and his friends, but the relatively-small pit in his stomach grew exponentially larger as every single person in the gym had stopped what they were doing, and joining Kaminari in staring at him, their collective facial expressions being the same as his.

"Um...sorry about that...?"

In his defense, he knew he definitely would've damaged the thing if he wasn't careful, but he genuinely wasn't expecting to actually break it, and so easily, too—his intention was to just get a high score in general and keep acing the other tests...if it weren't for the fact that he hadn't actually tried to lower his output all before now, with this being the result.

As soon as he figured out how to evenly distribute One for All in a small amount throughout his body, All Might had focused the majority of their training time in having him do various exercises and stress tests to increase his overall output. So because of what he was expected to face in the exam, there just wasn't a reason to start going backwards—the process was almost entirely power up until you can't, and then release when it became too much to handle.

Ah, yes, the consequences of his actions. How he missed them.

"Midoriya." The sudden voice caused Subaru to immediately whirl around and come face-to-face with Aizawa Shōta, who was now staring him down with a blank face. "You broke it because you gripped it too hard, right?"

"...yes, sensei."

"Hm." Aizawa's face turned thoughtful for a moment, before he brought the tablet in his hand up and started tapping on it. "I'll just mark you with the highest score possible. By the way, it doesn't matter to me if you destroy all the equipment, as long as you continue to take this seriously like you have been."

Subaru, who was still holding the crushed handle in his hand, nodded gratefully at the man. "I understand. Thank you, sensei."

Aizawa gave him a nod of his own before he started walking away, but not before calling out to everyone who was still just staring at him.

"All of you, get a move on. I'll end up failing all of you for this part if I don't immediately start seeing you using your grip tests."


Distance Run

"Is...is he..."

"Yes. Yes he is."

After yet another display of watching Izuku breeze through the tests that took place after the grip test (nothing but a green blur during the timed push-ups and sit-ups), Aizawa told them they only had one left to do—a timed distance run. All they had to do this time was just run around the track a few times, and then the robot at the end would record everyone's time. Should be pretty simple, right?

That sentence didn't even begin to show just how much of an understatement that was for Izuku.

Right as the blank gunshot went off for everyone to start running, Katsuki and the others in 1-A was treated to the sight of Izuku immediately getting wrapped in his Full Cowl green lightning and then already getting halfway through the first lap before anyone else so much as rounded the corner. Sure, Īda and Yaoyorozu were still the fastest behind him, they couldn't even compare to the absolute unfairness that was Midoriya Izuku with All Might's Quirk.

Right before they all got to the track, it was obvious that everyone was already more than well aware of just how effortless it looked for him to be quite literally blitzing through basically all the tests, but while Katsuki could only stare on as Izuku finished the final lap (with the robot at the start/finish line behind him yelling out a "32.4 seconds!"), it felt like every single thing he saw him do before now didn't compare to what just happened before his eyes.

"Man..." Kirishima said next to him with a sigh. "Is it a bad time to be jealous of Midoriya?"

"How do you think I feel?" Mineta replied somewhere behind him.

Katsuki couldn't help but snort. To be honest, this shit was already well past ridiculous. What was next—him getting some kind of henshin?

But good for him, he supposed.

Katsuki himself knew at an intellectual level he was talented, but he had always been completely overshadowed by his best friend when it came to school and all that academic stuff. He'd (probably) never tell him, but he actually took a fair amount of pride in the fact that he had the better Quirk—it would've (should've) meant they were destined for different careers, but that changed when Izuku got picked to be All Might's successor and even getting the man's Quirk passed over to him.

Katsuki had every right to be jealous here. And more than a small part of him actually was, after everything he saw today. His best friend quite literally immediately showed himself off as the top dog of the class, and he couldn't help but feel increasingly left behind—after all, how were you supposed to catch up in power to a Quirk that was literally made to stockpile it?

It was all he could do now to hope all that power wouldn't go to Izuku's head.


When all was said and done and the last person finished the distance run, Aizawa announced they were finally done with the 'Quirk Aptitude Test', even giving them a couple minutes to rest before he showed them the results (not that Subaru needed it, really). With the tap of a finger on his tablet, he held the device out with the screen facing upwards, and a light shot out from it to display the hologram of a scoreboard.

As his eyes immediately flicked to the top left area on the board, and he processed the characters shown on display, he finally raised his eyebrows in mild shock when he realized that yes, it really was his own name occupying the number one spot, clear as day, with the names of Yaoyorozu Momo and Todoroki Shōto taking the second and third spots.

Okay, he knew he was having way too much of an easy time during these tests, but still, he didn't actually think he'd end up being the best out of everyone else in the class.

(Well, if he really had to think about it, the times he only ever got outdone was during the ball throw by Katsuki, the side-steps by Mineta, and the seated toe-touch by Hagakure Tōru, so when you put it like that, then...)

Huh. So this must be how Reinhard and Garfiel felt, sometimes.

After another moment or so of being stupefied at his ranking, Subaru finally got the sense to look through the rest of the scoreboard, and nodded with satisfaction when he saw Uraraka, Īda, Kirishima, and Ashido's names not too far down the list, his eyes kept trailing over the rest of the names (and discreetly looking at the people they corresponded to), until he got to the very last entry.

20. Mineta Minoru

Oh. Oh no.

Subaru's head immediately whirled to the side to look at Mineta, who was now facing the ground while on his hands and knees.

"I...I'm in last place...?" he heard the other boy whisper.

The silence that followed very quickly turned deafening as he noticed the other students in the class look at Mineta as well, with Īda even kneeling down to put a hand on his back to try to comfort, but even that didn't stop the visible shaking that started happening.

"Mineta," Aizawa's voice rang out, and Subaru turned his gaze towards the teacher. "I've good news for you—I was lying when I said I'd expel whoever was in last place. That was just something called a logical ruse to make sure everyone would try their absolute hardest in these tests, which they did. And so did you. So you're off the hook for now, at least. I better not see any slacking off from you."

"Sensei..." Mineta began. "THANK YOU SO MUCH! I PROMISE WON'T LET YOU DOWN!" He was now repeatedly bowing to the man with tears pouring out from his eyes, and Subaru felt immense relief at seeing his friend not get expelled, after all.

(No, seriously, it would've been extremely unfair to study and train your ass off for the entrance exam, get into the hero course, only to be expelled from it just because the teacher didn't like how you did on the impromptu first day aptitude test.)

"Hm. I'll hold you to that." Aizawa looked back to the rest of the class, his eyes repeatedly sweeping over everyone in the crowd, with just a ghost of a smile on his face. "Good job, all of you. This is where we'll end it off for today, so go get changed. I'll see you tomorrow." With that, he walked away towards the gym, leaving the class to talk among themselves.

Several of them started going off excitedly about how fun today was (with even a few were talking about Aizawa's 'logical ruse'), but as Subaru ended up locking eyes with Ashido by chance, she gave him a grin and a thumbs up, to which he responded with his own.

Not a bad start, all things considered.


Henshin (変身) - Transform/transformation, but you already know how this is used.

And that's a wrap for the QAT. It was supposed to be just one chapter, but I ended up splitting it because I was already a week behind schedule, and it would've been way too long with the way I'm going about these scenes.

We've also got the Battle Trials to cover starting next chapter, so stay tuned for that, because if you're seeing where I'm going with this when it comes to Subaru!Izuku, it's gonna get pretty good.