The internal clock of the "Box" was a low, subsonic pulse that Izuku felt in the marrow of his bones. Overhead, a flickering holographic timer projected against the smog-choked artificial sky: 09:42. Ten minutes until the blast doors at the far end of the district hissed open and the "Monster" was unleashed.
"The extraction point is three kilometres north, past the collapsed subway hub," Izuku said, his voice clipped and clinical. He adjusted his reinforced gauntlets, his eyes scanning the jagged skyline of Ground Omega. "All Might is going to play the long game. He'll use the verticality of the skyscrapers to pin us in the alleys. If we move through the drainage tunnels, we can negate his mobility and reach the Green Zone in six minutes. We need to move, now."
"Shut. Up."
Bakugo was standing five paces away, his back to Izuku. His shoulders were hunched, his hands twitching at his sides, small sparks of orange light popping like firecrackers in the gloom.
"I heard the mouse, Deku. I know the rules," Bakugo spat, finally turning his head. His eyes were bloodshot, the pupils narrowed to pinpricks of frantic intensity. "And I don't need your damn map, and I sure as hell don't need you playing captain."
"This isn't a playground game, Katsuki," Izuku said, his voice dropping an octave. "We were paired together for a reason. If we don't coordinate, we fail. The teachers are looking for a unit, not a solo act."
"A unit?" Bakugo let out a jagged, mocking bark of laughter. He took a step forward, the smell of burnt sugar and nitroglycerin filling the air. "All you have to do is stay five yards behind me and keep your mouth shut. Don't get in my line of sight, and don't get in my way. You're just a secondary objective that I have to carry on my back. I'll handle the heavy lifting."
Izuku let out a weary, frustrated sigh. "That is childish. And how are you still worried about who's leading the 'act'? If you don't listen, All Might is going to crush us."
"Watch me," Bakugo snarled.
He didn't wait for a rebuttal. With a sudden, violent crack of light, Bakugo ignited his palms, launching himself into the air. He intentionally angled his palms to leave a thick, suffocating trail of black smoke in Izuku's face, a physical middle finger before he disappeared into the ruins.
For a minute, the test proceeded in a fractured, chaotic rhythm. Bakugo blasted through the upper floors of the ruins, scouting with a reckless disregard for stealth, while Izuku blurred through the streets below, his 8% Full Cowl leaves of green lightning dancing across the concrete.
It happened near the two-minute mark. Bakugo was about to vault over a collapsed bridge when Izuku slammed into his path, skidding to a halt and blocking the way.
"You're moving too loud!" Izuku shouted over the wind. "You're practically calling him to us! We aren't getting this done as quickly as we could. Start listening to me!"
Bakugo didn't even slow down. He tried to shoulder-charge past Izuku, but Izuku reached out, his hand gripping Bakugo's shoulder to force him to a stop.
The reaction was instantaneous and visceral.
Bakugo spun with a snarl, his arm swinging in a wide, violent arc. He smacked Izuku's hand away with a force that echoed like a whip-crack. "Don't you ever touch me!"
"Stop being a baby and finish the test!" Izuku yelled back.
He felt it then, the heat. It wasn't just the friction of the quirk, it was a rising, oily temperature in his gut. It was the sheer, exhausting arrogance of the boy in front of him.
"Shut up," Bakugo muttered. He began to pace, his voice becoming more frantic, a rhythmic, repetitive chant. "Shut up, shut up, shut up... you're always there. Always in my way."
He stopped and looked at Izuku, his face darkening as he stepped into the shadow of a leaning skyscraper. "From the minute we hit that damn playground, you haven't let up. You were always there, Deku. Always in my shadow, getting in the way of my own reflection. You were a standard, bottom-feeding roach. You were meant to stay in the dirt."
Bakugo took a step closer, his voice trembling with a mix of trauma and loathing. "But for some reason, you felt like climbing up some dead trail. You think because you got a little power, you're the protagonist? You're just a glitch in the system. Shit I can't scrub off my boot."
Izuku stood his ground, his eyes glowing with a terrifying, steady emerald light. "I didn't come to UA to annoy you, Katsuki. I'm here because I have to be. I'm here to be a hero. And if you continue acting like this, like a wounded animal biting the hand that's trying to pull it out of the trap, then you should just give up. You won't even make it to the second year. You'll just be a point on a leaderboard before the winter hits."
Bakugo lost it.
His fist moved faster than Izuku's reaction time, a raw, un-augmented punch that connected squarely with Izuku's jaw. The force sent Izuku stumbling back, his boots dragging through the dust before he collapsed onto the cracked pavement.
A small, thin line of blood began to seep from a cut on Izuku's cheek.
Bakugo loomed over him, his silhouette blocking out the artificial sun, casting Izuku into deep shadow. "You really think you have a greater chance than me?" Bakugo roared. "You're a damn roach, Deku! Always crawling into corners of rooms you were never invited into! If anyone is going to lose out on their chance, it's the quirkless loser who thinks a hero suit makes him a king!"
'God! It's like he doesn't even know those words fit him so well!'
Izuku stayed on the ground for a long moment, his head bowed. He reached up, wiping the blood from his face with the back of his glove. When he spoke, it was a whisper, low, vibrating, and devoid of any humanity.
"If I go down... I can damn well make sure you go down too."
Bakugo let out a harsh, jagged laugh. He stepped forward and shoved Izuku's shoulder with his foot, pushing him further into the dust. "Go ahead. Spill your guts. Scream to the teachers. Cry to your comatose mom. In the end, people want talent. They want power. And I have them both in spades."
Bakugo leaned down, his face inches from Izuku's. "I've made it this far. You're going to have to kill me to take me out of this course. You're nothing."
Izuku slowly stood up. He didn't look angry anymore. He looked empty. He brushed the grey dust off his hero suit with a slow, methodical precision.
'Mom...'
"That was the second time you hit me today," Izuku said, his voice chillingly calm. "If you do it a third time... I will make sure it is the last time you do so with so little restraint."
The air between them turned electric. Bakugo's face twisted into a scowl of absolute doom. He didn't hesitate. He didn't think about the cameras, the teachers, or the ten-minute timer that was now screaming toward zero.
"Make me!" Bakugo screamed.
He threw the third punch, but this time, he didn't hold back. His palm opened as his fist flew, and a massive, concentrated explosion detonated at the point of impact.
The test was forgotten. The extraction was gone. There was only the roar of the blast and the sight of Izuku Midoriya being sent flying like a ragdoll, smashing through the brick façade of a nearby building as the countdown continued to go down.
___
The silence in the observation room was heavier than the smoke on the monitors. Recovery Girl sat in her specialized chair, her hands trembling slightly as they gripped the handle of her cane. On the main screen, the dust was still settling where Izuku had been thrown through the brickwork, the jagged hole looking like a wound in the side of the building.
"They're doing much worse than we imagined," she said, her voice thin and weary. She didn't look at Nezu. Her eyes were fixed on Bakugo, who was standing in the middle of the street, chest heaving, his palms still smoking from the blast that had sent his classmate flying.
Nezu stood at the edge of the console, his paws folded behind his back. The usual spark of playful mischief in his eyes had been replaced by a cold, analytical sheen. "Human behaviour," he murmured, "is the only variable that remains stubbornly resistant to logic."
"Didn't you see this coming?" Recovery Girl turned to him, her expression sharp. "You have a quirk that makes you the most intelligent creature on the planet. You built this 'Box' to stress them. Did you not calculate the breaking point of two traumatized children?"
Nezu's snout twitched. "High Spec can calculate the trajectory of a bullet, the structural integrity of a skyscraper, and the economic fallout of a war. But a grudge... a grudge is not a mathematical equation. It is a living thing. I expected friction. I did not expect Katsuki Bakugo to prioritize his ego over the survival of his peer during the most critical exam he has faced so far in his life. I mapped out the 'Hero' and the 'Student,' but the 'Teenager' is far more erratic than I anticipated."
In the back of the room, Tenya Iida stepped forward, his face pale under the fluorescent lights. "Principal Nezu... should we stop this? Bakugo just used a lethal-grade explosion on a teammate. Midoriya hasn't moved. This isn't training anymore."
Nezu stared at the screen for a long beat. "You're right. The data is compromised. There is no pedagogical value in this violence." He reached for the primary override switch. "I will contact All Might. I'll tell him to intervene immediately, secure them both, and fail them. We will have to re-evaluate their status in the Hero Course entirely."
But as Nezu's paw hovered over the red 'Intervene' button, the world died.
Click.
The bank of monitors, dozens of screens showing every angle of the Box, flickered once, turned a sickly shade of neon green, and then went pitch black. A second later, the overhead lights cut out, plunging the observation room into a terrifying, airless darkness.
The heavy, reinforced steel doors of the observation room suddenly slammed shut with a deafening THOOM, the manual locks engaging with a series of metallic clacks.
"What is this?" Midnight's voice rose in the dark. "Nezu, is this part of the 'Monster' scenario? A power-outage simulation?"
"No," Nezu's voice came out of the shadows, sounding sharper than a razor. "The 'Aegis Protocol' has been triggered. These are the bunker's hard-lock security measures. They only activate in the event of a total breach or a catastrophic system failure."
Aizawa fumbled for his phone, the screen lighting up his tired face. "No service. I can't even get a signal to the internal security hub."
"Same here," Vlad King growled. "We're cut off."
"Kaminari!" Nezu barked. "Try to tap into the local wiring. See if you can bridge a connection to the central server. We need to know if the 'Box' is still pressurized."
Denki Kaminari stepped toward the wall, his hands glowing with a faint, yellow spark. He pressed his palms against a data port, his eyes closing as he tried to sense the flow of electrons. A moment later, his eyes snapped open, and he pulled his hands away as if the wall were red-hot.
"I... I can't feel anything," Kaminari whispered, his voice shaking. "It's like the electricity is... dead. Not just cut off, but jammed. There's a frequency hitting the building that's drowning out everything. It feels like static is screaming in my head."
Nezu didn't wait for further explanation. He scrambled onto the main desk, pulling a hidden keyboard from a recessed panel. This was a hard-wired terminal, built to bypass the wireless mesh. As he began to type, the small screen on the keyboard flickered to life, scrolling through thousands of lines of code in a frantic, scrolling blur.
The light from the small screen cast Nezu's face in a ghostly white. His eyes moved at a superhuman speed, tracking the data.
"Someone has hacked the school's security systems," Nezu said, his voice devoid of emotion.
"The League?" Aizawa asked, his hand tightening on his capture scarf. "Did they break in?"
"No," Nezu replied, his claws clattering against the keys. "The perimeter sensors are still holding. There are no physical intruders. This is a 'Ghost Hack.' Someone didn't break down the door, they re-wrote the locks from the inside. They've bypassed the firewalls and moved directly into the wireframes, the very skeleton of UA's digital infrastructure."
He paused, a line of code flashing red on the screen.
"They haven't just shut us down," Nezu whispered, a cold realization dawning on him. "They've isolated us. The Box is still running. We can't see what's happening, and we can't stop it."
He looked up at the darkened room, at the silhouettes of his panicked students and his exhausted teachers.
"This will be a long endeavour," Nezu said, his paws returning to the keyboard with a renewed, frantic energy. "I have to re-build the logic of the school one line at a time."