Chapter 41: Final Exams, Part 2
"This really isn't necessary," Aizawa grumbled as he was led along by two of his students, still blinking spots from his eyes. "My vision's cleared up a lot."
"Sir, I don't think either the principal or Recovery Girl would approve of you returning to work without having someone take a look at you," Momo said as they entered the small structure where the school nurse had set up shop.
Recovery Girl looked away from the bank of monitors where the other students' practical exams were playing out in real time as they walked in.
"Back already?" the tiny old lady said, hopping out of her chair.
"Just tell them I can go," the underground pro groaned.
"He, um, kind of had a flashbang detonate at close range to him," Izuku explained, feeling awkward about the fact that he and Momo were the ones who'd done it, despite it being a test.
"Yes, yes," Recovery Girl said. "Shota, sit on the exam table."
The dark haired man grumbled mutinously but reluctantly did as he was told. The school nurse shined a light in both his eyes, examining him briefly. "Looks like no lasting damage was done," she said, handing Aizawa a bottle of eye drops. "Use these as needed and let me know immediately if you experience any unusual irritation or vision issues."
He nodded with a grunt, taking it as his chance to get off the table and head for the exit, only halting when he was in the doorway. "You two passed," he informed Izuku and Momo. "Congratulations, I guess."
Recovery Girl released a derisive snort the moment the door closed after him. "Honestly, you'd think it would kill him to display a little enthusiasm," she remarked. "Though I suppose he's probably embarrassed and just doesn't want to show it."
"Ma'am?" Momo asked.
The old lady smirked. "Ah, I suppose he didn't tell you," she said. "You two broke the record for quickest successful completion for the first year practical . And until now, first years always just went up against robots, not teachers, so previous exams were easier."
Izuku and Momo traded a surprised look before breaking out into pleased grins. Izuku raised a hand and the two bumped fists.
Before any of them could say anything further, the door swung open and the number one hero marched inside, an unconscious teenager slung over each shoulder.
"Oh for goodness sake, Toshinori!" Recovery Girl exclaimed as the huge man put the battered boys on two of the beds in the room. "Do you know the meaning of restraint at all?!"
"Sorry, sorry!" All Might said. The meek apologies were almost comical coming from the hulking pro hero. "But I was tasked with pushing these two to their limits and beyond to force them to cooperate!"
"And how did that work out?" Recovery Girl grumbled.
"I doubt me pulling my punches would've made them more likely to work together!" All Might sputtered.
"It could hardly have made them less likely to cooperate, from what I saw," the nurse huffed, as she began to examine her two patients.
Izuku gazed silently at Kacchan's battered, unconscious form while All Might made good his opportunity to escape. Even knowing that he'd been in a fight with All Might, it still felt a little surreal witnessing the invincible prince of Aldera Middle School in such a state.
"Something wrong?" Momo asked, apparently noticing him staring.
"I guess it just feels weird, seeing him like this," he said. "I told you how during the Sports Festival how Kacchan had never lost at anything that really mattered, at least until you beat him in the tournament? But now not only did he fail, I passed. It's crazy."
"I don't think there's anything the least bit crazy about that," Momo said firmly.
Izuku turned his gaze away from Kacchan to look at her and blushed. "W-We only did so well because of your plan."
A soft cough from Recovery Girl cut off the retort Momo was about to deliver, reminding them both that they weren't alone in the room.
"I can treat you if you need, but from what I saw on the monitors, I doubt either of you suffered so much as a scratch," the healing heroine said.
"Oh, right! I'm totally fine!" Izuku agreed, with a little more volume than was strictly necessary.
The raven-haired girl nodded in agreement. "I'm also quite unharmed."
"In that case, you can both be on your way," the nurse said.
"Uh, actually, would it be okay for us to stay and watch?" Izuku asked.
"We tried to help everyone train for this," Momo added. "We'd like to see whether that pays off or not."
Recovery Girl shrugged. "So long as you don't get in the way of my work."
The two thanked her softly, then turned their attention to the bank of monitors.
"So, what do you figure we should do if we actually run into Nezu?" Kaminari asked as he and Ashido walked through the faux city where their exam was taking place. "Kick him and run away?"
"Feels like that would be a little too mean," the bubblegum pink girl replied. "Let's just capture him. Or run away. With how short his legs are, he can't be very fast."
"Yeah, I guess you're—"
The blond boy didn't get any further before a massive wrecking ball slammed into an empty skyscraper, causing it to fall onto another building, which then fell onto another building, and then that fell onto another building, structures falling like giant dominos and kicking up tremendous plumes of dust.
"Oh my god!" Ashido screamed.
"Run!" Kaminari shouted.
The two took off at a sprint toward the exit to the testing area, but they didn't get very far before a second swing of the wrecking ball set off another chain reaction of collapsing buildings.
The hero students screamed in terror once more before trying to detour around the latest obstacle in their path.
Kaminari screamed again when the principal set off a third cascade of falling buildings, but this time Ashido grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him behind a nearby wall where they were hopefully out of Nezu's sight.
"What are you doing?!" he hissed, even though there was no possible way the principal could've heard him over all the devastation still playing out. "We have to keep running!"
"No!" Ashido objected. "That's exactly what he wants us to do! Remember what Yaoyorozu and Midoriya were saying at the prep session?"
Her teammate's expression firmed. "Don't do what your opponents expect, be creative," he said. "Be agents of chaos if you have to. You're smarter than you think." He added, recalling what the class reps had said to them specifically.
"Exactly!" Ashido said. "Now we just need to figure out a way to do that!"
Kaminari's face fell. "You don't have an idea?"
"Hey! I didn't have any more warning that Nezu would have a wrecking ball than you did!" Ashido retorted. "Also, I'm not the only person on this team, Mister!"
The electric hero student opened his mouth to argue that since she was the one who'd stopped them from fleeing in terror, and therefore she should come up with the plan, only to stop before he'd uttered a word.
"Is that an 'I just came up with a plan' kind of silence?" Ashido asked.
Kaminari grinned.
"Oh man, oh man, this is really bad!" Mineta moaned. "We need to overcome a teacher and resist the sexy?! How the hell are we supposed to do that?"
Midnight had taken up a position between the two students in the testing area and the exit they needed to reach in order to pass the exam, and was currently surrounded by several clouds of pink Somnambulist vapors, preventing them from approaching without getting knocked unconscious.
"Dude, calm down," Sero implored the smaller hero student.
"How can I calm down?!" Mineta exclaimed.
"Because if you don't, we'll probably both fail!" Sero hissed, running out of patience.
This didn't exactly achieve the desired effect. "Oh man, we're screwed. Screwed, screwed, screwed, screwed!"
"We're not screwed unless we panic!" Sero said. When his teammate still failed to get a hold of himself, he sighed, calming down himself instead. "Look, I get that the odds seem to be stacked against us right now, but we can't just give up."
"Why not?"
Sero rolled his eyes. "Well for one, Midoriya took the time to brainstorm with you on how to best use your Quirk yesterday. You know, the guy who's clearly head over heels for Yaoyorozu. The girl you'd totally perv on all the time if you weren't scared of him. The girl you continue to shamelessly ogle whenever you get a chance," he pointed out. "You gonna just lay down and give up after that guy tried to help you in spite of all that?"
Mineta was silent for a long moment, then he scowled at his teammate. "I hate you, Sero," he proclaimed, before heaving a sigh. "Fine, let's do this."
"Welcome to your test, gentlemen," Cementoss greeted Kirishima and Sato, the blocky hero striding toward them. "I wish you luck, but I'm not going to make this easy for you!"
The street before him suddenly bulged upwards, then the raised area went rushing toward the two students like a wave in the ocean, forcing them to scramble out of the street and duck behind a building.
The two poked their heads out from behind their cover to see a solid wall of cement, easily several stories tall, gliding down the street, followed by another, and then another. Getting any closer to the pro hero or the exit was going to involve getting past countless numbers of the moving obstacles.
"Oh man, I knew this would be tough, but he's determined to just be a complete wall between us and passing this test!" Kirishima grunted.
"Then we're gonna have to bust through!" Sato said, punching his palm with one big fist.
Kirishima was just about to agree but stopped himself at the last moment. Midoriya and Yaoyorozu had spent a lot of time explaining to him exactly what he'd done wrong at the Sports Festival that had seen him eliminated from the tournament, as well as how he could improve.
At first he'd chafed at their input, despite how much he appreciated them taking the time to try and help him. They had mostly said that he was too prone to attacking head-on and trying to brute force through things rather than adapting as the situation required.
That part had stung to hear, but he couldn't say they were wrong, or that he was really upset by it. In fact, it had felt like an actual explanation and breakdown of what he'd done wrong at the festival, which was a lot more helpful than Mr. Aizawa's "Shape up and stop rushing into battles like a suicidal fool" or All Might's rambling, confusing collection of pointers from the day they'd come back to school the festival.
No, the part that bugged him was their suggestions on what he should do differently. He supposed all the tactics and strategies they'd suggested were smart, but refusing to meet his enemy face-to-face, slinking about to attack from behind, trying to mess with his foe's head…all of it felt sneaky to him. Dirty. Cowardly.
Unmanly.
It had taken them a long time to convince him that there was a lot of space between what he'd been doing and conduct that was downright dishonorable. He didn't have to stick a dagger into his opponent's back, but it was foolish to have every fight on his enemy's terms when he didn't have to. They had pointed out that if he encountered, for example, an villain who only liked to fight from a distance, there was no need to respect that rather than getting up close and personal with the guy. Doubly so if innocent lives were at stake. That had helped him a lot to accept what they were telling him.
"Wait!" he said. "We shouldn't just charge in without a plan!"
Before Sato could respond, Cementoss called out to the two of them. "You're welcome to stay where you are, but you can't hope to pass this exam if you don't make a move!"
"He's right," Sato said. "If you've got a plan, I'm all ears. Otherwise, we gotta get out there and figure it out as we go!"
"Right, here's what we're gonna do," Kirishima said. "You attack him from this way, and I'll go around the corner and attack from that way. He'll need to deal with attacks from two different directions!"
"Brilliant!" Sato exclaimed. "He'll never be able to handle that!"
"Let's do this!" Kirishima said.
Sato took a packet of sugar out from a pouch on his belt and downed it. Immediately, his muscles bulged with enhanced power. "We're gonna ace this!"
"I fear that Thirteen's Quirk is capable of consuming even my sparkle, mademoiselle," Aoyoma remarked as he as Ochako peeked out from behind a corner at space-themed hero.
Thirteen was between them and the escape gate, standing guard like a sentinel. The hero's tinted helmet ensured that they had no idea what direction she was looking in.
As if there was any real chance of them simply sneaking past her if not for that.
"I confess, I am at a loss," Aoyoma said, pressing the back of his right hand against his forehead in what the brunette was pretty sure was the most dramatic gesture known to man. "The moment Thirteen spots us, I fear we will be lost."
Ochako bit her lower lip, mind racing as she tried to think of a way they could possibly pass this, trying to recall everything she had learned and every piece of advice she'd been given so far.
Gunhead told me to never fight on your opponent's terms if you can avoid it, but to instead make them fight on yours. Thirteen's a rescue hero, so she's not as used to combat as some pros. Does that mean we should try to fight her instead of escaping? She thought, closing her eyes as she concentrated.
Still, that would require getting close to the hero without getting caught in the inescapable vortex of Thirteen's Black Hole Quirk. The only way they could do that would be to attack before the teacher was even aware of the assault.
Yaomomo told me to try to attack from angles that other people won't see coming. Midori mentioned how my Quirk is great for controlling the battlefield in unexpected ways…
Her eyes popped open, and she began to rapidly look around the testing ground that she and Aoyama were in. It was filled with huge, elaborate buildings, like some cross between a rich person's estate and an overgrown amusement park (she really didn't know what the architects who'd designed UA had been thinking with this one). More importantly, the whole area was enclosed by a massive dome of steel bracers and thick glass, similar to the USJ.
"You have a plan, mademoiselle?" the French student asked.
Ochako nodded. "Aoyoma, I need you to be the biggest, most attention-grabbing, most sparklydistraction ever!" she said, hands balling into fists.
The blond boy inhaled deeply, puffing out his chest. "Moi's moment has arrived," he proclaimed softly, almost reverently as he placed his fists on his hips. Despite the total lack of a breeze, his cape began to billow out dramatically.
She nodded. "Good man."
"And you, mademoiselle?" he asked.
Ochako pressed a button on one of her costume's gauntlets. Tiny vacuum devices in her boots came to life with a barely perceptible sound. They were too weak to do much or even be noticeable normally, but of course she had ways of changing that.
She touched her own face with all five fingers, activating Zero Gravity, then she began to walk up the side of the nearest wall.
The brunette had initially been skeptical of building this piece of support gear into her costume when Yaomomo and Midori had come to her with a proof-of-concept version to try, given how nauseous using her Quirk on herself tended to make her. However, Uraraka had found the effect was hugely reduced when her boots allowed her to walk along a surface and provided her with a definitive "down" as opposed to when she was floating and twisting about randomly in space.
She still wasn't sure she was ready for the grappling attachment they'd suggested, but one thing at a time.
"I'm going to get the drop on Thirteen," Ochako said.
"Acid borehole!" Ashido shouted, shooting a blast of her strongest acid at one of the piles of debris blocked their path thanks to Nezu's wrecking ball.
"Please tell me you're not actually going to name one of your moves that!" Kaminari said.
"Of course not!" the pink girl scoffed as a hole melted into the pile of broken concrete and twisted metal before them. "I just don't have time to workshop anything right now!"
With a way past the obstacle cleared, the two of them rushed forward.
"Ugh," Ashido said, shaking out her hands.
"You okay?" the electric student asked her.
"Yeah," she said. "I'm just not used to making so much powerful acid so fast."
"Then I guess it's a good thing we decided to go with the crazier option!" Kaminari laughed.
The sane option would've been, of course, to use the horned girl's ability to cut through the obstructions Nezu was creating in the service of reaching the escape gate. However, Kaminari had pointed out that they were much closer to the principal than they were from the exit, and that they could easily take Nezu in a close quarters fight.
Unfortunately, Nezu seemed to have realized what they were up to, and the rat-like principal had dramatically increased the speed at which he was knocking down buildings in the faux city.
Ashido was pretty sure that Cementoss would be spending weeks repairing this place after this test.
She wondered if the teacher got paid overtime to do that kind of thing…
"We're almost there!" Kaminari said, pointing at the crane that Nezu's wrecking ball swung from. The operator's cabin was mounted high in the air atop steel scaffolding, but a simple ladder led up to it, and the crazed principal inside.
"Once we get to it, we're home free!" Ashido cheered.
The wrecking ball slammed into a nearby structure, much closer to the two of them than it had before. The pair of students screamed as they scrambled around, narrowly avoiding great chunks of broken concrete and metal.
"Holy crap!" Kaminari yelled. "Nezu's freaking crazy! He's even putting himself in danger!" he added, seeing how several pieces of debris were striking the scaffolding that held the big piece of demolition equipment he was operating in the air.
Fortunately for the educator of indeterminate species, the thick steel supporting him didn't yield.
"Isn't this a bit much?" Izuku asked, watching the monitors in Recovery Girl's medical station. "This seems really rough."
"The principal is getting quite reckless," Momo agreed, frowning.
Recovery Girl sighed. "Nezu was experimented and toyed with by humans in all sorts of ways in the past. It's left him with a bit of a grudge against humanity. He lets it out at times like this," she said. "Or at least, he was trying to. Those two have thrown a wrench into his plans for this exam. I'm afraid it's made him a bit testy."
"Testy?" Momo echoed, arching an eyebrow.
"Nezu's accustomed to things going according to plan when he creates a scheme," the old heroine explained. "In this case, he clearly expected Ashido and Kaminari to either run around like chickens with their heads cut off until time expired, or to find and use the one path he was leaving for them and escape."
"So he's the sort of planner who gets upset when things don't go the way he expects?" Momo asked.
"Indeed," Recovery Girl said. "For someone like Nezu, having those two just cut through the obstacles he set up for them must feel like trying to enjoy a game of chess only to have his opponent start eating the pieces."
"So he's putting himself, Ashido, and Kaminari in danger because he's annoyed everything's not going according to plan?!" Izuku asked with wide eyes.
"Hero work is dangerous work," Recovery Girl said.
Chapter 42: Final Exams, Part 3
"This is nuts!" Kaminari yelled as he and Ashido continued to frantically dodge falling pieces of broken buildings as they rained down from the sky. "We'll never manage to reach him like this! Also he'll kill us all!"
"Wait, I have an idea!" Ashido shouted.
She fired a stream of acid out from her hand. The thick, viscous liquid splashed against the struts holding up the crane Nezu occupied and left a long, wet trail along the ground.
"What are you doing?!" Kaminari asked. "You can't melt solid steel! And if you did the whole thing might collapse on us!"
"I can too melt steel! It would just take me a while!" Ashido stamped her foot in annoyance. "But that's not what I was doing! I made that acid weak but super conductive!"
The electric student's eyes lit up.
"Do it, Kaminari!"
Still dodging falling chunks of destroyed buildings, Kaminari made his way to the acid that was dribbled over the ground and touched it. "Directed shock: 1.2 million volts!" he shouted as energy began to crackle off his form.
Up in the cabin of crane, Nezu was operating the wrecking ball with increasing ferocity and frustration, though the principal of indeterminate was refusing to stop using one hand to pour and drink tea while he was at it.
He was not about to use both hands against two of the students with the lowest test scores in their score. It was just the principle of the thing.
Unfortunately, the principle of the thing was what undid the principal of UA, because while the cushion of the crane operator's seat was non-conductive, the tea he was spilling and sloshing everywhere was not.
"I can actually see Nezu's skeleton," Izuku remarked with wide eyes as they watched the principal writhing around on the monitor, bolts of electricity cracking through the crane operator's cabin. "I thought that only happened in cartoons."
"So did I," Momo agreed with an expression of mild horror.
"Eh, Nezu's tougher than he looks," Recovery Girl shrugged. "Serves him right for toying with students like a cat with its prey, if you ask me."
Like pretty much all the hero students, Kaminari and Ashido were in excellent shape, but after the frantic sprint through the faux city, not to mention the accompanying, heart-pounding terror, climbing the ladder that went from the ground to the crane operator's cab left them both huffing and puffing.
Fortunately for them, the principal was in no state to do anything to try and thwart their ascent.
"Oh my god," Ashido gasped as she and her fellow student entered the surprisingly roomy cabin of the crane.
Nezu was laying on his back on the floor, fur badly singed and beady eyes gazing sightlessly upwards.
"Is he dead?" Kaminari asked in a small voice. "Did we kill the principal of UA?!"
Ashido poked the rodent educator with the tip of her shoe.
"Tea and thunder…" Nezu moaned.
"Oh," the pink girl said. "He's alive."
"Ah, cool, then," Kaminari said.
The pink girl slipped the cuffs they'd been given onto Nezu's wrists. They closed with a satisfying click.
An airhorn sounded in the distance. "Ashido and Kaminari have passed!" a voice boomed from a megaphone somewhere.
The two students shared a look, then high-fived one another before both laughed weakly.
"That was freaking terrifying," Ashido whispered.
"It totally was," Kaminari agreed, just as shaken. "That summer camp had better be amazing."
"Oh, I'm so lonely here all by myself," Midnight moaned into the emptiness around her. "Why don't you come out and play, boys? I don't bite. Much." She added, licking her lips suggestively.
"They'll be no biting today!" Sero proclaimed as he suddenly swung out from behind a nearby building. He had a piece of his own tape covering his mouth and nose.
"…damn it," Mineta added as he bounced out from behind cover, also with tape covering his mouth and nose.
"I hope you boys don't think covering your faces like that makes you safe from me," Midnight said, taking a length of her whip in both hands and pulling it taut. "Even if you do nullify my Quirk, I'm a very experienced woman."
Mineta moaned piteously, even as he and Sero kept moving.
"We know better than to underestimate a pro hero like you!" Sero said, shooting tape.
"And for once, I'm not going to give into the sexy!" Mineta added, pulling off orbs from his head and hurling them in Midnight's direction, though they landed a good distance away from the Rated-R heroine.
"Trying to keep your distance from me, boys?" Midnight taunted. "Smart move, but unfortunately you can't seem to shoot quite as far you need to."
"How does she come up with this stuff on the fly?!" Mineta shouted, even as he kept hurling more orbs.
"Dude, focus!" Sero shouted, as the two students continued to circle around her.
"Come now, boys. I give you points for determination, but all you're doing here is shooting your loads prematurely," Midnight said.
"Seriously, this is the sort of stuff that people normally don't come up with until later when it's too late!" the diminutive hero student practically wailed.
"Mineta!"
"Fine, fine!"
Laughing seductively, Midnight took a defensive stance, whip at the ready as she waited for them to inevitably draw in closer to her for an attack.
However, that didn't happen. Instead, the two started to gradually move further away from her, even as they kept moving in circular patterns around her and unleashing their Quirks nonstop.
Her eyes widened as she realized, too late, what their game was.
The main reason Mineta had been pitted against her was because of his obvious weakness for and proclivities regarding girls; he would need to get at least something resembling a handle on that if he wanted to pass an exam where she was his opponent.
Sero had been chosen to partner with him from among the other 1-A students who didn't have any glaring issues that called for a matchup against a specific teacher mainly because his Quirk didn't have a great deal of brute force. That made it unlikely he would carry his partner to victory and avoid Mineta not needing to do anything to pass.
However, there was one thing the two of them, when combined, were practically peerless at, at least among UA's student body.
Area denial.
They must've realized she had finally figured out their game, because they abruptly moved to make good their escape. Mineta bounced off a couple of the purple spheres he'd dropped onto the ground and launched himself high into the air. Sero caught him, and together the two went sailing in the direction of the escape gate.
"Bye, Midnight!" Sero called.
"Get back here!" Midnight shouted, moving to pursue.
Unfortunately, that was easier said than done, given that her opponents had turned a wide area all around her into a veritable minefield of sticky balls and wads of equally sticky tape. One wrong step and she'd probably crash to the ground and get hopelessly entangled.
The damned weights weren't helping anything, either. While she was in excellent shape and quite strong for a woman of her size, she got no strength boost from her Quirk, unlike some of the other teachers. That meant lugging around a significant fraction of her own body weight was kind of a big deal!
The airhorn signaling the end of the exam sounded well before she'd reached the outer boundary of the tape and ball-riddled area.
The heroine shook her head, slipping back into her professional persona as a slow smile spread over her face. "Impressive technique for such young men," she remarked to herself.
"Hey, it looks like Mineta and Sero passed," Izuku said. "I didn't want to say it, but I really thought they were in trouble when Mineta started panicking. Looks like they managed to rally, though."
"Yes, it appears that the time you spent working with Mineta was quite fruitful," Momo noted. "Still, I hope you won't mind if I continue leaving the task of working with him to you."
"Not at all," he quickly agreed. "But why? He has he done anything, has he?" he added, eyes narrowing.
Momo shook her head. "No, at least not since he tried to hitch a ride with me during the obstacle race at the Sports Festival," she said. "Still, I'd prefer not to have much to do with him if possible. It's just the…" she trailed off, struggling for the right word.
"The vibe you get from him?" Izuku suggested.
"That's as good a way to put it as any," she nodded. "That hasn't changed."
"Okay," Izuku agreed. "And, um, I know you're very capable of taking care of yourself, but if he does do something, feel free to let me know. I'd be happy to have a talk with him."
Recalling the scene from the locker rooms a while back, Momo smiled. "I've no doubt that you would be."
"Oh, it looks like Kirishima and Sato are still trying to get to Cementoss," Izuku said, looking at another monitor.
"Oh man, these walls just keep on coming!" the redhead growled as he shattered another slab of moving concrete.
Even with his Quirk activated, his fists were throbbing painfully from the endless blows against solid concrete. He could take the pain, though; enduring suffering in pursuit of a righteous goal was manly, after all.
The only problem was that he was barely making any progress against the unending number of barriers that Cementoss was sending at him.
Damn, I was sure that attacking him from two different directions would do it! He thought with frustration.
His only hope was that Sato was doing better than he was.
"My sugar boost is wearing off!" his teammate wailed from the distance. "I think this is gonna have to be up to you, man!"
"Dude, I need you to stay with me!" Kirishima shouted.
"So sleepy…" Sato moaned before suddenly going silent.
Okay, never mind then.
The number of cement walls coming at him suddenly doubled.
Kirishima let out a mighty roar of both frustration and determination as he redoubled his efforts.
"Oh, he's not adapting to the situation very well," Izuku noted.
"Indeed," Momo agreed. "It was a good thought to try splitting up and attacking from two directions at the start, but…"
"They should've tried something else when that didn't work," Izuku finished. "As it is, it looks like they're going to run out of time unless Kirishima suddenly comes up with a really good idea. Even if he tries to run, he may not be able to make it at this point."
"We should probably try to talk with him about strategy and tactics again," Momo remarked.
"Yeah," Izuku nodded.
"So, besides them, who's left?" Momo asked.
Izuku hummed as his gaze quickly skimmed over the many monitors. "Looks like Jirou and Koda just managed to pass. So did Tsu and Tokoyami, Hagakure and Shoji, and Iida and Ojiro. That just leaves Uraraka and Aoyoma."
"Not even your dazzling light can hope to escape my black hole," Thirteen said, doing her best to sound villainous.
Her best wasn't very good, really, but Aoyoma wasn't about to call the teacher out on it. After all, not everyone could be as gifted a thespian as himself!
Also, he was clinging to a railing for dear life as his whole body flailed about like a windsock caught in a typhoon, thanks to having the full force of the teacher's vortex Quirk aimed squarely at him.
"Mon lumière cannot be defeated so easily!" he shouted out, using his costume's internal mechanisms to fire his laser from his shoulders.
Amazingly, the glittering beams of light actually curved around and were sucked up into the black hole at the teacher's fingertip.
"Where is your partner, hero?" Thirteen asked. "I hope she isn't trying to sneak around me to the exit and leaving you here."
"Mon amie, I would like to know myself where she is!" Aoyoma lied, casting a furtive glance upward, even as he fired off another impotent laser barrage.
Uraraka was walking on the underside of the dome that enclosed the testing area, carefully getting herself into position so she was almost directly above Thirteen but just behind the hero.
"You're saying your partner just abandoned you? I don't believe you," Thirteen said. "That's not very heroic."
Uraraka deactivated the vacuum device in her boots and pushed off the ceiling of the dome, gliding toward Thirteen at a leisurely pace. Due to the sheer height of the dome above them, she'd need to get much closer to the hero than she currently was before she could restore her own gravity. To do it now would be her own doom.
"What you believe and what my perfide teammate have done matter not!" Aoyoma proclaimed. "I shall best you myself with my sparkle!"
With a cry, the blond student unleashed the biggest barrage of laser blasts that he could manage, filling the air with twinkling, sapphire radiance.
All of which was quickly consumed by Thirteen's black hole.
"Come now, you can't seriously believe that this will…" Thirteen trailed off, and though Aoyoma didn't know what the teacher's face actually looked like, he could still practically see the expression of dawning realization on it.
It came just a little too late.
"Meteor Kick!" Uraraka shouted as she touched her fingertips together to restore her gravity.
Her boot collided right with the dome of Thirteen's helmet, and the teacher collapsed to the ground, the cap that covered her fingertip closing as she fell, either through long trained reflex or an automatic function of her costume.
"Ugh!" Thirteen grunted as she hit the ground, her puffy hero costume apparently not cushioning the blow very well.
Uraraka wasted no time in slapping the cuffs onto Thirteen's wrists, and the horn sounded to signal the end of their exam.
"Magnifique, mademoiselle!" Aoyoma cheered as he got himself to his feet and dusted off his costume. "Your plan has brought us victory!"
"Uh, thanks," Uraraka said before moving to help Thirteen up. "Are you okay?" she asked the teacher.
"I've had worse," Thirteen groaned. "Congratulations, you two."
"All right, they passed!" Izuku said, pumping a fist.
"Indeed. It was a risky ploy, but probably the best they could've done under the circumstances, short of taking advantage of the fact that Thirteen wouldn't do anything to risk seriously hurting them with her Quirk. Which would be rather against the spirit of the exercise," Momo mused. "I'm just glad they managed to pull that off before their time expired."
As if on cue, an airhorn went off in the distance, signaling the end of the testing period for Kirishima and Sato.
Izuku sighed. "Well, that's it for them, then," he said.
"Unfortunately not much of a surprise," Momo nodded.
Before they could converse further, a bedraggled looking Ashido and Kaminari entered the room, the latter carrying a still twitching Nezu in his arms.
"Hey, Recovery Girl," Kaminari greeted the nurse nervously. "I think Principal Nezu might need some first aid."
They were clearly expecting a fierce tongue lashing for leaving the principal of UA in such a state, but the school nurse declined to dish it out.
"Yes, yes, just put him down on one of the beds there," she said, not even looking all that annoyed. "What about the two of you? Do you need any treatment?"
"No no, we're totally fine! Just tired!" Ashido was quick to reassure the nurse, surprised but not about to complain at her mild reaction to the state they'd left Nezu in.
Dropping off the principal, the two were quick to make their escape, nearly colliding into Jirou in the doorway as the punk girl entered.
"Hey," she greeted Izuku and Momo while Recovery Girl was giving Nezu a quick look. "Guess you two breezed through your final as quickly as we all expected, huh?"
"I wouldn't quite put it that way, but we were the first to pass, yes," Momo answered.
"We saw that you passed, too," Izuku added. "Congratulations!"
"Thanks, but it was really all Koda," Jirou said. "All I could do was encourage him while Present Mic bombarded us with about a million decibels." She added, touching one of the thin streams of blood that were oozing sluggishly from her ears.
"My goodness," Recovery Girl exclaimed as she took in Jirou's current state. "Are you all right, dearie?"
"I was hoping you could tell me," Jirou answered.
"Of course. Come here and have a seat," Recovery Girl said, gesturing to one of the free beds. She turned to Izuku and Momo. "I think you two had better clear out of here now. It's about to get a lot busier here, and there are no more exams to watch, anyway."
"Of course. Thank you for letting us stay here and observe, Recovery Girl," Momo agreed.
She and Izuku departed from the medical station and out into the afternoon sunlight. The green-haired young man let out a small sigh of relief as it sank in that the final exams were well and truly finished with.
"Well, I'd say things went well for our class, overall," Momo remarked.
Izuku nodded. "Yeah, eight of the ten teams passing is pretty good."
"And one of the two teams that failed had the two people who refused our help in training and prepping," the raven-haired girl pointed out. "Don't misunderstand me, I'm not trying to claim credit for everyone's hard work, but I must admit to feeling pleased that almost everyone we worked to help managed to pass."
"I get it. I feel the same way," Izuku admitted. "That was a brilliant idea you had, with the drone, by the way. Thank you."
She beamed at him. "Of course. We're a team, and I know you'll always be there to help me if I need it."
He nodded, blushing. "Good job, class rep."
She chuckled. "I couldn't have done it without my brilliant vice rep."
Meanwhile, well on the other side of the city, a sleazy businessman wearing small, round spectacles walked into an equally sleazy bar.
"Hello, Kurogiri. Nice to see you again, Shigaraki," Giran greeted the duo waiting to for him, taking a long draw from his cigarette. "I've got a couple of new recruits for your little crusade, eager to join up with the organization that's taken up Stain's cause."
He gestured to the two people standing behind him: a young woman in a schoolgirl uniform of some sort, with her blond hair up in a pair of messy buns, and a badly scarred man with short black hair.
"Say hello to Dabi and Toga," Giran added.
Hours later, a grumpier than usual Shota Aizawa was sitting in one of UA's teachers lounges, bent over a stack of exam review forms, his pen moving much faster and more forcefully than was necessary.
He didn't even look up when the door opened, hoping it was Snipe or Lunch Rush or some other member of the staff who'd be perfectly content to do whatever he'd come to the lounge for while leaving him in peace.
"Hey, there, Shota!"
"Working hard, I see."
No such luck.
Even All Might in full "you did your best" mode would've been preferable to these two.
"Whatever you two want, I'm not interested," he said. "Leave me alone. I'm busy."
"Oh, come on now, that's not nice," Hizashi pouted.
"You can't put aside that for a minute to make some time for your friends?" Nemuri added.
They were much too in sync with each other, he noted immediately. The two of them hadn't just happened to wander into the lounge and decided on a whim to pester him, they had come looking for him for some reason.
Ugh.
"Okay, whatever you came here for, let's just get it over with so you can leave me alone," he said.
"My, Shota, why so cranky?" Nemuri asked, playing dumb.
"Could it be because of your record-setting loss today during the exam?" Hizashi added as he peered over the tops of his glasses, looking entirely too innocent.
"So that's what you're getting at," he said. "Well, you can knock it off. I'm not sulking over it."
That was a lie, and even he knew it. The underground hero wasn't about to admit, though. Honestly, if he wanted to pout for an afternoon, he thought he should have that right, and these two shouldn't be able to call him out on it. Goodness knew they had certainly had their little lapses in professionalism. Besides, he'd be back to normal tomorrow.
"We both know that's not true, Shota," Nemuri said, eyes narrowing slightly.
He still refused to dignify her by admitting he was sulking, instead glaring balefully up at her and Hizashi. "The two of them both badly need a dose of humility and a lesson that they can't rely on their Quirks so heavily," he said. "I had hoped to administer that today, but obviously that didn't happen. Instead they're probably more overconfident than ever. Now I have to hope that I can convey that lesson to them another time, or hope that when the real world does it, they don't pay the price with their lives."
"Oooooor…maybe you're not giving those two enough credit, and they weren't the ones who needed that dose of humility," Hizashi said.
"What?" Aizawa snapped.
He'd expected some obnoxious teasing from these two at some point as a result of his very quick and one-sided defeat today, but this was a surprise.
"Those two are some pretty amazing kids, and I'm fairly sure you're the only one who sees this glaring flaw in them that desperately needs correcting," Nemuri put in.
Aizawa scowled. "You two teach them English and commercial hero marketing—"
"Modern Hero Art History," the raven-haired heroine interrupted, correcting him.
The underground pro ignored her. "I'm their homeroom teacher. I see them doing hero training more than the two of you put together."
"And yet, we predicted how this was going to go and lot more accurately than you apparently did," the blonde countered.
Aizawa frowned in confusion. ""What are you talking about?"
"Frankly, I'm shocked you thought that matchup was going to be anything other than a breeze for Yaoyorozu and Midoriya," Nemuri deadpanned.
"What?"
"You decided to pit yourself against two of the most creative and strategically minded students in the school with some of the most versatile and powerful Quirks we've ever seen. The two who have defeated a genetically engineered monstrosity created to defeat All Might multiple times," Hizashi said flatly.
"Kaminari and Ashido were right. If they were allowed to be a team, they should've been made to face off against All Might," Nemuri added.
Aizawa's jaw clenched. "If both of you expected me to lose, why didn't you warn me against that matchup?" he demanded.
"We suspected that if we actually convinced you to change things, you would've altered the teams and stuck either Midoriya or Yaoyorozu with Bakugo, and neither of them should've had to depend on him for their final exam grade," Nemuri said. "Todoroki needs an attitude adjustment when it comes to his classmates and his Quirk as much as Bakugo, but Midoriya and Yaoyorozu work brilliantly with others so long as the people they're working with don't despise them."
"But more importantly, we thought that they weren't the ones who needed a reminder not to rely too heavily on their Quirks," Hizashi said.
He glared at the voice hero. "I need a reminder of that?"
"Yes," the blond man said evenly. "You've gotten too accustomed to fighting D-list villains who completely panic the moment you erase their Quirks."
"We watched the security footage from the USJ attack," Nemuri cut in before he could retort.
"The Nomu was incredibly strong even with its Quirk erased," he said, barely keeping a hold of his temper in the face of such an asinine argument. "There's no real way I could've defeated it on my own."
"We're not talking about the Nomu," Hizashi said. "We're talking about Shigaraki."
"What?"
"You did extremely well against the no-name thugs the League brought with them to the USJ, but Shigaraki was a little smarter than them, wasn't he? He took his time to observe you for a bit, figured out exactly how your Quirk works, and the instant he jumped into the fray, you lost the layer of flesh on your elbow," Nemuri pointed out.
He glared venomously up at the two of them, mind racing as he searched for a rebuttal. "And you don't think that might have had something to do with the fact that I'd just fought over a dozen villains?" he asked eventually.
Nemuri leaned down toward him. "Look me in the eyes and tell me that's not just an excuse, Shota."
"It's not just an excuse," he ground out.
She sighed. "Fine, be that way."
"I will, thanks," he grumbled, gathering up his papers, getting up from his seat, and stomping out, slamming the door to the lounge behind himself.
Hizashi sighed. "Well, that didn't go as we hoped it would," he said. "Do you think maybe he'll admit we had a point when he calms down?"
"To us, no," Nemuri answered, shaking his head. "To himself? I hope so."