sorry it's been so damn long on this story, entrance exam chapters absolutely fuck me up.

"The boss said this'd be an easy job, but I never seen a wannabe hero just stand still thinkin' there's a villain right in front of 'em. You waitin' for an introduction?"

"Is that what you're supposed to be?" Izuku countered, genuinely confused. "You really need to work on your communication skills."

The man he was addressing, several inches taller and several pounds less muscular, snorted through his mask.

"That's rich, comin' from a brat who can't take a compliment."

"Who are you, anyway?" Izuku plowed on.

"I'm the end of the line, kid. Ain't nobody getting into Yuuei this year."

"That's not true. Thirty-six people get in from the common entrance exam every year," he pointed out.

"Then I guess we better make sure there ain't thirty-six kids left!"

On the last word, the man lunged for him, seeking to grab his weapon rather than strike him, but Izuku was prepared. Rather than pull away, he shoved back, taking advantage of the man's momentum as he tugged on the staff and sending him sprawling backwards; to loosen his opponent's grip, he also used his Quirk to split the weapon cleanly down the middle and transfer as much of its mass as he could directly underneath the man's palms, forcibly breaking his grip as the bone ballooned wildly out of proportion and Izuku twisted the weapon sideways.

Without hesitating, he pressed his advantage, fusing the two halves into a whole and bringing the lower end of the staff up to strike the man upside the head - then, in one fluid motion, Izuku spun the staff around and whacked him squarely on the forehead.

The man slumped to the ground.

"Two hits? Really?" Izuku said aloud, prodding one of his would-be attacker's kneepads with his shoe. When there was no reaction, he turned away, thinking hard about what to do next - for all of three seconds, anyway, until the answer came flying out of an alleyway and sailed through the air to collide with a building on the opposite side of the street. This answer took the form of a man dressed identically to the one he'd just knocked out, but before Izuku had taken even a single step towards him, a resounding crash sounded from the same alleyway.

A couple of seconds later, a girl emerged onto the main street, red-faced and out of breath. Izuku recognized her as the girl he'd met that morning, and when she saw him, she made to jog over, relief written across her features.

"Hey - you again," she puffed. "Good t' see a familiar face."

"Yes," Izuku agreed, plowing straight into the question on his mind. "What happened to that guy?"

"Oh, uh…" The girl rubbed the back of her neck, sheepish. "One of the robots went after him, so while he was fightin' it, I managed to get him with my Quirk. When he turned around to see who'd hit him, it punched him and I took out the robot after."

"You never told me what your Quirk is."

"Oh!" She perked up a little at this. "It's called Zero Gravity. Anything I touch floats."

"But it can't actually remove the effects of gravity," Izuku pointed out, thinking back to his science classes. "Anything you touched would immediately be launched into space."

"Well...no, it ain't - " and here she laughed " - but that's the name. So, zombie-san - "

"It's Midoriya," he interjected, unwilling to be identified as a zombie.

"Midoriya-san!" she corrected herself, bowing a little. "Sorry, I know ya told me earlier...but, um, who are these guys? They're not takin' the exam, that's for sure - heard that one yellin' at the robot that it didn't know who it was attackin'. And uh...did you do that?" she added, nodding past him at the man he'd knocked out.

"Yeah. He tried to jump on me and said he was a villain, so I hit him. His brain must not have many wrinkles in it."

"That musta been a tough fight," the girl theorized, puffing out her cheeks with a sigh. "You okay?"

"I'm fine. He didn't even touch me, I just hit him in the head before he had a chance to do anything else."

"I...oh. That's good." She looked past him, standing on tiptoe to see what had become of the villain she'd used her Quirk on; he too had collapsed, at the foot of the building he'd collided with, and a frown crossed her lips. "Hey, they're wearin' the same kinda outfit. Maybe they're just like the salarymen at the villain company or whatever."

"You think they're henchmen?" Izuku asked, hands on his hips. That's probably what they are. They're dressed identically, after all. "If that's it, then there are probably more of them going after the others, and there's undoubtedly an actual villain at the heart of the attack," he reasoned, biting the inside of his cheek. "I'm not sure this is part of the exam, but either way, we should investigate."

"Right," she agreed. "Let's start at the medical camp and make sure all the victims are okay. Isn't that where villains usually attack first, 'coz it gives 'em hostages?"

"That's a good idea." Thinking for a moment, he added: "Stay behind me."

He split the weapon again, into two three-foot cylinders, and before the girl's stunned eyes, the one in his left hand shifted slowly into a wide, flat plane - a shield. The other remained mostly as-is, sharpening at one end until it resembled an oversized toothpick.

"That's way cooler 'n zombies," she blurted out, clearly remembering his Quirk's name. Izuku shook his head.

"It's also more situational. I'm useless outside ordinary fistfights if I don't have access to dead matter," he pointed out, taking a step towards the arena's center. This time, he glanced back at her, remembering to give her a cue to follow him, and she followed suit. The two of them set off for the mock medical camp at a brisk trot.

"I'd say zombies are more situational," she said, mildly. "Don'tcha need dead people for that?"

"Fair," he said, and it was. "Well...not necessarily people. Animals work, too. I sicced a bunch of dead rats on a bank robber last summer."

"Oh, so that's why ya got chewed out," the girl laughed. He cracked a smile. "Who caught you?"

"Sir Nighteye. He ended up telling me to take being a hero seriously, so I had to apply here."

"I think my parents got subcontracted to take care of part of one of his new offices a couple months ago," she said, tapping a finger to her chin. "They said the old one's fallin' apart. Kinda weird that a pro hero would let that happen, huh?"

"It looked fine on the outside," he shrugged. "The inside felt like an old library, though. Lots of dust and books and dead bugs."

They were promptly interrupted by the appearance of a one-pointer as they took a shortcut through an alley; with the girl behind him, Izuku couldn't dodge to the side, so he brought his shield up to meet the robot's heavy punch, focusing his Quirk on instantly repairing any fractures or damage to the shield's surface and his body on staying grounded. Even so, he slid back a couple of feet, at which point the girl slipped past him and touched her fingertips to the steel arm still braced against Izuku's shield.

Even though she'd told him what her Quirk was several minutes ago, he was still fascinated by the way the robot instantly left the ground, rising, rising -

"Watch out - release!" came a shout from behind him, and he leapt away as the robot crashed to the ground, pulling his companion down into a crouch and raising his shield to block flying debris from the impact.

"Nice."

"Thanks," she puffed, getting to her feet and dusting off her knees. She offered the still-crouched Izuku a hand, which he accepted.

The pair made their way to the medical site, which - true to the girl's predictions - was in utter chaos. Their fellow examinees darted about the edges of the camp, seemingly uncertain as to how to deal with human opponents as those very opponents laid waste to the camp. Izuku felt his blood boil as he watched a man and a woman, dressed identically to the other two henchmen he'd seen so far, dragged a struggling brunette out of one of the tents -

"I saved that woman from a three-pointer earlier," he breathed, as the two of them peered at the carnage from around a corner. "Shit. Shit, shit, shit."

Izuku took an unconscious step forward, thoughts revving up into overdrive, but before he could take off running, a gentle hand landed on his wrist.

"Wait," the girl hissed. "We don't have the Quirks to deal with a fight like that."

He bit his lip. She was correct; as he'd discovered from his two-on-one with the robots earlier, even one extra combatant could make a world of difference when so few were involved. "We need help," he decided. "Let's try circling around to the other side of the block and see if we can meet up with anyone."

"Yeah."

To their relief, they met no resistance on the side streets; from what he'd observed so far, it wasn't unlikely that the henchmen had ambushed whatever examinees they could find and made their way to the camp in order to take hostages. Considering that he'd knocked his own attacker out with two hits, Izuku had no way of gauging just how combat-capable the other henchmen were. On top of that, they were certain to have a wide variety of unique Quirks of their own, so it also wasn't unlikely that they'd managed to take out at least some of the other students. This theory was confirmed when, amidst the hostages, Izuku spotted two boys and a girl in tracksuits with their Yuuei-issued nametags still stuck to the front.

To his relief, however, they weren't the only students who'd decided to come back to the medical area; the two of them ran into another pair of examinees on the opposite side of the plaza not a minute later, lurking around the edges of the scene and looking just as conflicted as Izuku felt.

"Hey!" hissed a girl's voice, low and boyish. "Beef and broccoli! Over here!"

The newcomers (or maybe we're the newcomers and they've been waiting here a while? he mused) were a young man with the head of a bird and a girl whose earlobes had decided to sprout eighth-inch male audio cables. The girl Izuku had been travelling with perked up immediately, clearly glad to see them; while Izuku struggled to work through the phrase "beef and broccoli" (why is she talking about food?), she waved and called back:

"Hey! Boy, are we glad to see someone else on our side!"

"You guys think this is part of the exam?" the other girl whispered, as they drew near. Izuku shook his head.

"Wouldn't they have said so?" he asked, expression blank.

"Deception from the dark," the other boy rumbled, dipping his head. The head in question resembled nothing so much as the overgrown hybrid of a crow and a chicken, with the disturbing addition of human teeth inside of the beak. "Do you think that Yuuei would have simply let this happen?"

"That's true," the brown-haired girl reasoned. "Yuuei's full of pro heroes, right?"

"Maybe they're preoccupied," the girl with the earlobe jacks suggested, darkly.

"Whether or not they are, we're still in trouble," Izuku pointed out. "If it's part of the exam, we're probably getting scored on what we do here. If it's not...well, doing nothing won't get us anywhere." He'd learned this lesson very well over the past year - act before you have to if you want to move forward.

"So what do you suggest?" asked the crow-child.

"Quirks!" Izuku declared. "What can we do between the four of us?"

"Oh, oh, are we doing introductions then?" gushed the girl he'd met earlier, clearly excited. "I'm Uraraka Ochako. My Quirk's Zero Gravity!"

Oh, yeah. Uraraka-san. She told me her name before orientation earlier, Izuku realized.

"Uh, Jirou Kyouka. Earphone Jack."

"Is that related to those?" Izuku asked, pointing to the eighth-inch jacks.

"Um...yeah. They're mostly good for listening in on things, but I can also use them as a weapon."

"How?" he pressed, searching his pockets for a pen before realizing he didn't have anything to write on.

She blinked, clearly not expecting such a direct question. "Like a whip, so I can take care of myself in a fight."

That's fair. She wouldn't have gotten this far if she wasn't able to fight, after all.

Next up was - "Tokoyami Fumikage. Dark Shadow."

"Dark what?" Uraraka echoed.

"Dark Shadow!" Tokoyami repeated, spreading his arms, and before Izuku knew what was happening -

"Wait, you can make a shadow clone?" he blurted out.

"It is not a clone, but a beast from the dark," Tokoyami declared, voice smooth and deep. "An emissary from the nether plane, with my body as a vessel!"

A beat.

"So...it's a Stand," Izuku decided. Tokoyami stared at him for a moment.

"...It is a Stand," he agreed, at length.

"It looks more like it's floating to me," Uraraka commented, missing the reference entirely. Jirou snorted.

"Alright," Izuku went on, thumping his palm with his fist. "So we have...recon, status support, a damage-dealer, and...I don't know what I'd fall under, but I can fight and provide backup. No healer, but healing Quirks aren't very common. Tokoyami-san, what's the range on your St - your Quirk?"

"I would say about ten meters," came the reply. "Why do you ask?"

"Do you prefer to fight at range like that?"

"Generally, yes. I am...not the most physically powerful individual," Tokoyami admitted, glancing down at his less-than-muscular body. Izuku nodded.

"Right. I'll protect you - you can do the fighting. Jirou-san, you can scout out any possible targets and keep an ear out while we fight - let's try to take them on with the best odds possible. Uraraka-san…" He thought for a moment. What can she do? She's close-ranged like me, but as far as I can tell, she's relying mostly on her Quirk to fight...but there must be something she can do that I can't, right?

Then his eyes landed on a pile of rubble nearby and he knew exactly what she could do.

"Uraraka-san," he repeated. "Can you make nearby rubble weightless? We can use it for projectiles, and we can use the larger pieces for cover."

"Got it!" she hollered, louder than was necessary. "Jirou-san, Tokoyami-san, how about it?"

"That's a reasonable plan," Jirou offered. "It plays to our strengths."

"Revelry in the dark" was Tokoyami's take on it, which Izuku took to mean yeah, sure, I'm down.

There was nothing significant about their first encounter - a group of three, making their way towards what remained of the medical camp. The four of them got the drop on the villains, and Dark Shadow - a birdlike projection from Tokoyami's body - took out the first within seconds, sending him sprawling across the pavement. The other two were quick to react, keeping their distance from Dark Shadow and advancing on the seemingly defenseless Tokoyami right up until a barrage of concrete chunks forced them to act defensively. One crossed his arms, taking the blows for his companion as she peeled back her glove and aimed all five fingers at Tokoyami -

Fingernails, Izuku realized. Her fingernails are moving!

"No you don't!" he shouted, lunging forward with one hand out. He didn't need to point at his target to use his Quirk, of course, but it was a habit he hadn't been able to break, and he liked to think it helped him focus.

The second he had control of the dead tissue, however, something else occurred to him. He'd never taken control of tissue with a Quirk factor before, Bakugou's callused palms notwithstanding (he didn't use Explosion through his skin, after all), and the feeling was quite unlike controlling the mundane bodies of rats.

He didn't know what her Quirk was, but he could at the very least inhibit her usage of it so long as it affected only her fingernails. As the confused villain turned on him, clearly trying to work out a countermeasure, he lunged to cover the gap between them, darting past her burly defender to knock her to the ground. I feel bad having to hit a girl, but villains are villains!

With Izuku himself away from his companions, and with supplies running low, they'd lost the advantage of what he liked to call projectile spam. No longer needing to devote himself to defense, the man who'd served as the woman's shield turned on Izuku, but before either party could act, a pair of eighth-inch audio jacks slipped into both of his ears; a moment later, he crumpled, howling in pain. Thinking fast, Izuku detached the woman's long hair, formed it into a serviceable rope, and bound the incapacitated man's wrists and ankles together by simply fusing the hair into an unpleasant mass akin to something found in a neglected shower drain. "Nice one," he told Jirou, who'd rushed to his aid, and she smirked.

"You too. Kinda gross, but it works."

They managed to fight their way through another group of villains a couple of minutes later. There were five this time, but Izuku followed up on Dark Shadow's attacks using what he'd learned from countless hours spent playing Dark Souls (attack while they're staggered!) and managed to handle the three with close-combat Quirks simply by using Tokoyami's Quirk - which was immune to physical damage - as both spear and shield.

With just ten minutes remaining for the exam (at least according to Tokoyami's watch), Izuku felt the first prickles of true anxiety beginning to creep along the back of his neck. "Shouldn't they be announcing that there are only ten minutes left?" he asked the other three, expression blank.

"I would imagine so," Tokoyami rumbled. "But I also imagine that they have been overtaken by this darkness…"

"Yeah, if this isn't part of the exam, then it's more than likely that the heroes are too busy to keep time for us," Jirou agreed. "All we can really do is hold out until they're done…"

One more fight brought them down to the six-minute mark, and they figured they might as well make their way back to the center of the arena to see if the hostage situation had improved - whether by external intervention or through the efforts of examinees with more powerful combat Quirks. If anything, however, it had worsened - around twenty of their fellow students had been captured, and if Izuku had to guess, there had been approximately thirty total at the start of the exam.

So aside from us, there are probably only about six left. It'd be best to team up with them first if we want to get anything done - everything's concentrated here, so there's no reason to divide and conquer.

This plan went out of the window entirely the moment the zero-pointer entered the arena, and it became painfully clear what the villains' plan had been all along.

"Attention: the zero-pointer has entered the arena," a woman's voice boomed across the arena, calm as could be. "Examinees, please evacuate the medical camp immediately."

"That's gotta be pre-recorded," Uraraka concluded. "There's no way they're expectin' the people who've been caught to escape."

The speaker system crackled to life again, and what came through this time was definitely live - from their position on the outskirts of the camp, they could see the person talking shouting into some kind of walkie-talkie.

"Alright, you little shits. That big-ass robot's headin' straight for the center of the arena, and we know that you haven't all surrendered yet. If the few of you still out there come quietly, we'll move everyone outta the way before it gets here - but if you don't, we'll just leave them here and watch 'em get crushed. I'd say you've got about three minutes left to decide whether or not their lives are worth gettin' captured for."

"You've gotta be kidding," Jirou muttered under her breath. "So our options are surrender or watch everyone die? Who wouldn't surrender?"

Izuku kept his mouth shut, thinking furiously. There's gotta be some way we can get through this. Three minutes...there's gotta be at least fifteen of the villains still remaining in the camp...and ten students. I know we can probably handle being outnumbered by just one or two, but how are we going to get the other six students together, introduce their Quirks, and win a fight of that scale in the span of just three minutes? he mused, almost able to hear gears whirring in his head. I guess I could start by scouting for dead material as far as possible - I should be able to pick up on anyone else hiding outside the camp by their hair and nails.

He closed his eyes.

"Midoriya-kun?" Uraraka's voice sounded concerned, and he shook his head, pressing a finger to his lips for silence. None of the others spoke as he knelt, placed both palms upon the ground, and reached out for anything - anyone - that he could.

He would later find out that Yuuei's garbage disposal system, which included a substantial amount of food waste from the kitchens, ran directly under both training grounds and out of the boundaries of the school. At present, however, all he could do was thank his lucky stars for however the metric ton of organic material had come to rest under the arena, and - forgetting his original goal of tracking down their fellow examinees - immediately set about pulling it together into what he could feel was a shambling mass, making sure to pull in whatever loose, inorganic garbage he could along the way like some sort of macabre Katamari Damacy.

There was no way to explain how exactly Izuku was able to feel through the slush of dead and decaying cells that he created, but there was enough matter for him to safely probe along the walls and ceiling of whatever tunnel lay beneath their feet until he found what seemed to be a vertical shaft leading to one of the manholes in the arena. Pushing the cover up and to the side through sheer force of displacement, Izuku maneuvered every last cell he could manage down the mock city street towards their location in what turned out to be a roiling, solid sludge even more foul than the rotting rat-slurry he'd created so many months ago.

Eyes now wide open, he got to his feet to inspect the hell he'd wrought, ignoring the retching of his companions.

Amidst the revolting mass, he could see various scraps and hunks of metal and processed wood, which would serve perfectly for what had sprung to mind the moment he detected this metaphorical gold mine. Still, he realized, there's not enough muscle or bone in here to form something movable, and I would prefer to avoid sludging the rescue targets. What can I use for a framework…?

Then it hit him.

"Tokoyami," he said, whipping around to face the bird-headed young man. "Can you bring out Dark Shadow?"

"I do not agree with this."

"We're running out of time," Izuku pointed out. "Thirty seconds spent dragging all that shit up out from under the arena, ten spent arguing, and another thirty spent working out a good form for it to take. That leaves us about a minute and a half between what I'm about to explain and the time it'll take to engage."

"You are correct," Tokoyami sighed. "For the sake of saving these people, I will accept this. It seems to be the only way."

"Glad you agree. Uraraka-san, can you make Tokoyami-san weightless?"

"Yup!" she chirped, kneeling to touch five fingers to Tokoyami's exposed ankle; immediately, he rose up off the ground like some sort of grotesque balloon, still anchored to the decidedly ground-bound Dark Shadow.

After fighting alongside it, Izuku had come to the conclusion that Dark Shadow was somehow only effectively solid, meaning that it could phase through solid objects or be affected by them as the need arose. Tokoyami didn't seem to have any fine level of control over this - in fact, he didn't seem to fully understand it at all - but the fact that he could be weighed down by the birdlike projection was all Izuku needed.

"I have to warn you, if Dark Shadow is completely covered in darkness, it becomes much harder to control," Tokoyami cautioned, now five feet off the pavement.

"I'll uncover it to let some sunlight in if I have to," Izuku reassured him, gazing up at the horrific golem that he'd sculpted around the (understandably repulsed) Dark Shadow. Comprised entirely of flesh and rotting plant matter, scraps from the support department integrated for extra bulk, and with Dark Shadow serving as both its skeleton and musculature, the goliath was roughly the size of a school bus and functionally immune to any and all physical damage.

"You good up there?" Jirou called to Tokoyami, who gave a shaky thumbs-up. "I can probably pull you down with my earphone jacks if you want."

"I'll be fine for a minute or two."

"Good. Can Dark Shadow still move?" Izuku asked him, and in response, the golem took its first heaving step - or whatever the crawling equivalent of a step was. As Dark Shadow had no legs, the amalgamation was only capable of locomotion by dragging itself along the ground, but as the four of them found out, it was surprisingly fast. According to Tokoyami, this was a direct result of Dark Shadow being submerged in complete darkness.

Izuku smirked.

The zero-pointer, still some ways away, was undeniably huge, and judging from the way it cleaved through buildings like papier-mache with single sweeps of its massive arms, also very powerful. If things came down to it, he figured that he and Tokoyami could stall the colossal robot while Uraraka, Jirou, and (presumably) the remaining free examinees handled the rescue efforts, but there was absolutely no way they could outright destroy it.

We have a minute and a half left...and something like forty people to evacuate. That means we need to absolutely sweep this fight!

"Let's go!" he ordered. "Tokoyami-kun, have Dark Shadow take the lead - Uraraka-san, Jirou-san, we can start untying the other examinees first."

"Not the volunteers from the Association?" Jirou asked, even as they took off after the shambling flesh-golem at a run.

"The other examinees can help us free the volunteers, and they'll provide more help in a fight," Izuku explained.

"Oh, you're the logical type. Gotcha."

The villains did not provide any sort of challenge for their unholy creation; with one swipe of its massive arm, it sent their entire front line flying, and even as those with ranged Quirks scrambled to set up a counterattack, the flesh along its other arm unraveled into a massive tentacle studded with chunks of scrap steel. A swing of this tentacle wiped out the remainder of the villains, and while Tokoyami kept Dark Shadow on guard, the other three set about untying the examinees just as the rest of those who hadn't been captured arrived.

"Sorry we're late," a red-haired boy grunted, kneeling next to Izuku. He began sawing at the ropes binding his hostage with the side of his hand, which he'd hardened to a dull edge. "We were trying to get everyone together before we engaged, but you guys just...wow. That bird guy's Quirk is super manly!"

"It made an excellent framework," Izuku agreed. The other blinked at him, clearly confused, but Izuku didn't elaborate; he was far too focused on getting everyone free before the zero-pointer arrived.

Unfortunately, while a single minute gave the nine of them enough time to release all forty-odd people the villains had captured, it did not spare the examinees even a single second to try and get the villains themselves out of harm's way. As a matter of fact, Izuku had completely forgotten about them, and he would have left without another thought if Uraraka hadn't reminded everyone present.

"Are we just gonna leave 'em there?" she implored, standing her ground. "Even if they were gonna hurt everyone - it's not very hero-like to leave 'em to die, ya know."

"Uraraka-san, I don't think we have time for that!" Tokoyami shouted; from up in the air, he had a much better view of the zero-pointer, which was now only two streets away. "The demon is nearly upon us!"

"Wait!" Izuku barked. As little as he wanted to save people who'd been threatening to kill every single hostage not five minutes ago, he had to admit she was right - aren't heroes supposed to save everyone they possibly can? "Uraraka-san's got a point. Tokoyami-kun, do you think Dark Shadow with my support is strong enough to hold it off for just another minute?"

"That thing's the size of a building!" the red-haired boy reminded them, but his next words made it apparent that he was not at all trying to dissuade them. "You know how manly you guys would be if you stopped it?"

"Everyone!" came another shout from the back of the group. The speaker, a tall young man with glasses and a stern glare, stood with one arm pointing to the sky in some sort of urgent gesture. "My Quirk is Engine. If you're able to buy me just a minute, I can get the villains furthest from us."

"I can help with that," Jirou added, raising her hand. "Midoriya-kun, Tokoyami-kun - if you can stop that thing from crashing around, I might be able to pick up on their heartbeats."

Izuku turned to study the zero-pointer, now mere seconds away from the plaza, and bit his lip. I can't tell if the main threat from that thing is getting stepped on or being crushed by the debris it's throwing around, but if we can keep it in place, that'll limit the amount of damage it can do to the surrounding area. "If you're going to help, get moving!" he ordered, glancing back over his shoulder at the assembled crowd. "Tokoyami-kun - position Dark Shadow under its foot!"

"Are you insane!?"

"Just do it!"

Crash.

As their goliath moved forward, arms raised to intercept the zero-pointer's falling foot, the young man with glasses took off at lightning speed and was across the plaza in a second, hoisting one of the villains over his shoulder in a fireman's carry. Izuku, jaw clenched, pointed five fingers at Dark Shadow and spread them; the mass of dead cells coating it began to move, forming a lengthy tendril rooted at one of the golem's wrists that wrapped around the zero-pointer's other leg.

His head started to pound.

The tendril shifted down to the robot's ankle joint.

"Tokoyami-kun," he called, "can you get Dark Shadow to pull on the zero-pointer's leg as hard as possible?"

"I can try!" the other returned. "But we'll be making a bargain with the demon lord himself!"

"What does that even mean!?" Izuku shouted, gripping his wrist with his free hand and taking a wide stance to keep himself grounded.

Tokoyami didn't respond, and for a single, heart-stopping second, Izuku saw with perfect clarity the zero-pointer's foot descending to crush Dark Shadow as it lowered its right arm - then it pulled, hard, on the robot's ankle, and the entire thing began slowly but surely to lean backwards, away from the crowd.

Taking down a robot the size of a building was, Izuku found, anticlimactic. The assembled students and volunteers didn't rally around the putrid behemoth that stood between them and a crushing death facilitated by a multi-ton slab of steel. They did not pool their collective powers to defeat their titanic adversary in spectacular fashion - no, half of them were far too focused on getting the collapsed villains out of harm's way to even spare the zero-pointer a second glance, confident in Izuku's and Tokoyami's strength.

The moment it hit the ground, Izuku released his Quirk and fell to his knees, one hand clutching at his forehead; now that the adrenaline of seconds prior was starting to fade, the pain hit him, and it was all he could do to stay conscious as a sharp sort of burning raced up and down along the center of his skull.

"Midoriya-kun?" a voice called. To Izuku, it sounded very distant indeed, but he was dimly aware of Uraraka kneeling at his side, hand on his shoulder. "Midoriya-kun, you alright?"

"I'm fine," he hissed, jaw clenching as a fresh wave of pain shot through his head. "Just...give me a minute."

He'd never overused his Quirk before, so he could only presume that that was the source of the headache, but he had to wonder - is this really all that different from the rat slurry? It's the same fundamental concept, so why was this so much harder?

Still distracted, now by his own thoughts on top of the pain, Izuku barely noticed the shout of "Tiiiiime's up!" until, roughly thirty seconds later, something long, tan and fleshy made contact with his cheek and latched on. He jumped back, startled, but by the time he figured out what exactly had left a wet spot on his face, the old woman in the lab coat had placed a gummy bear in his open palm and hobbled away to the next injured student.

Izuku stared at the candy, headache fading fast. In a matter of seconds, it had all but evaporated, leaving him feeling woozy in the way that one gets after a long nap.

"Feelin' better?" Uraraka's voice sounded from his left again, and he turned to find her sitting on the ground beside him, smiling a little.

"Yeah," he puffed, debating whether or not to pocket the gummy bear for later. At length, he offered it wordlessly to the girl who'd been kind to him since earlier that day, and she chuckled.

"Thanks, but those things give me some fierce cramps."

Izuku shrugged and bit the bear's head off with his two front teeth. "Are you alright?" he asked her.

"Yep, yep!" Uraraka chirped, chipper as a lark. "Jus' a few scratches, nothin' Recovery Girl couldn't heal in a couple seconds."

"Recovery Girl?" he echoed. Where have I…? Oh, right. She's a hero who mostly worked as a healer in disaster zones. "What's she doing here?"

Uraraka blinked, surprised. "You didn't know?" she returned, eyebrows disappearing beneath her bangs. "Yuuei's got an all-star cast teachin' here. She's the school nurse."

"You've done your research," Izuku commented. "I had no idea."

"I didn't either, 'til Present Mic announced it. I wouldn't even know his name if he didn't keep yellin' it every time he opened his mouth."

He snorted, feeling the corners of his mouth curve upward into a faint smile. "So was there a villain attack or not?"

"Doesn't seem like it," came another voice from behind them; both Izuku and Uraraka turned to see Jirou standing a few feet away, hands in her pockets. "They're acting like this was all standard to the exam. They could have at least told us something…."

Izuku tapped a finger to his chin. "But would it have really been an accurate test if they did?" he countered. "I said it earlier, but they probably scored us based on how we responded. That most likely includes how willing we were to take the attack seriously, even if it turned out to be a surprise test."

"If only we'd vanquished true envoys of the dark," rumbled a fourth voice, low and male; all three of them turned to the right, but Izuku at least had already known it was Tokoyami speaking. As far as he was aware, there were no other chuunibyou on this battleground. "Still, a satisfying battle. It brought jubilous palpitations to my sepulchral heart."

"What does that even mean?" Jirou blurted out, looking stunned. Both Izuku and Uraraka burst out laughing, and Tokoyami scratched self-consciously at the back of his head.

"I had fun," he mumbled, refusing to meet their eyes.

As things turned out, the villain attack had indeed been nothing more than part of the exam, orchestrated by the sidekicks of the hero Gang Orca (who, Izuku would later find out, had once been voted "hero who looks most like a villain"). While there was no explicit statement made on the nature of their individual results or how they were calculated, it was heavily implied that each student's response to the mock attack would play a major part in scoring their performance. The actual grading rubric, Present Mic announced, would be enclosed in their acceptance or rejection letters, which would be mailed out in one week's time.

The examinees were treated to lunch courtesy of the hero Lunch Rush, who'd somehow managed to prepare several hundred servings of every dish imaginable during the course of their exams. Izuku sat with Uraraka, Jirou and Tokoyami in the school's cafeteria, finding for the first time in his life that eating lunch with other people wasn't so bad after all.

On the opposite side of the room, he spotted Bakugou Katsuki sitting alone.

"The food's great, but is Lunch Rush really a hero?" Jirou asked. "Like, does he have a license?"

"Why don't you ask him?" Uraraka suggested, all innocence. "I'm sure he'd be glad to clear things up for ya."

Jirou shook her head as Tokoyami pecked a sesame seed off of the bun in his hands. "That'd be kinda awkward, though. Can you imagine asking someone pulling a kid out of a burning building if they're a real firefighter?"

"That doesn't really apply here, though," Izuku pointed out. "He's just cooking food. It's perfectly reasonable to doubt that he's actually a hero if he spends all his time serving as a chef."

"You know what I mean!" she complained, giving him a playful jab on the arm with one of her jacks. Izuku laughed, though he wasn't exactly sure why.

Maybe it's just a social response, he figured.

After some (excruciatingly boring) closing remarks from the diminutive principal, they were free to leave. Izuku, figuring that their brief camaraderie had come to a close, was the first to make for the gates and subsequently the first to be stopped by hands clutching his elbow.

"Hang on, hang on!" Uraraka hollered. "We gotta trade phone numbers and see who got in, right? And even if we don't all make it, we can still hang out and stuff."

Izuku, who had last given his phone number to Togata the previous summer, blinked and pulled out his cell. Mutely, he navigated to the settings, pulled up his number, and held the screen so that the other three could see it.

When the group chat request came through later that evening, Izuku smiled.

People aren't so bad after all.

probably would have written this better if I wasn't feeling pressured to just get through this goddamn chapter, my ass is never gonna be good enough to write a book at this rate lmao