The two-pointer hit the ground with a satisfying crunch, its optical sensor flickering out like a candle in a hurricane.
Izuku stepped off its chest and brushed some dust from his shoulder. Jiro yanked her jacks free from the robot's exposed wiring, her technique having improved noticeably in the last few minutes. They'd found a rhythm. She scrambled the sensors, he delivered the killing blow. Simple. Effective. Almost boring.
Forty-seven points. Maybe forty-nine if that last one counted before Compass finished it off. Not bad for a Quirkless delinquent and an angry punk rocker.
Present Mic's voice thundered across the fake city like the world's most enthusiastic alarm clock.
"TWO MINUTES REMAINING! LET'S SEE SOME GUTS, HEROES!"
Izuku turned to Jiro with a grin that belonged on a magazine cover. "Alright, Compass. Where to next? I'm feeling a few more three-pointers before the buzzer."
"Compass?"
"Your Quirk is basically a built-in GPS and sonar system. You're my compass. It fits."
Jiro's eye twitched. "That's the stupidest nickname I've ever heard."
"You'll learn to love it."
"I absolutely will not."
Before Izuku could fire back with something witty about her denial being the first stage of acceptance, Jiro's expression changed. The irritation drained from her face. Her eyes went wide. She ripped her jacks out of a nearby wall so fast they whistled through the air.
Her head tilted at an angle that made her look like a dog hearing a suspicious noise.
"Shh. Shut up for a second, Broccoli."
Izuku raised an eyebrow. "I wasn't saying anyth—"
"I said shut up."
He shut up.
The silence lasted three heartbeats. Jiro stood frozen, her jacks hovering in the air, trembling slightly. Her pupils had contracted to pinpricks.
"I don't hear anything but the usual carnage," Izuku offered.
Jiro's voice came out tight. Thin. Threaded with something he hadn't heard from her before.
Fear.
"That's because you're not listening with your bones. Something's coming. Something..." She swallowed. "Big."
The ground began to vibrate.
Not the sharp, staccato tremors of robot footsteps. This was different. Deeper. A low, resonant thrumming that Izuku felt travel up through the soles of his boots, into his ankles, into his knees. Like standing on the chest of a sleeping giant as it took a breath.
Jiro grabbed his wrist. Her grip was surprisingly strong, her fingers digging into his skin hard enough to leave marks.
"We need to go. Now."
A shadow fell over them.
Not the shadow of a cloud. Clouds didn't move that fast. Clouds didn't have edges. This shadow had edges. It had a shape. And that shape was getting bigger.
Izuku looked up.
The first thing he saw was a hand.
Each finger was the size of a shipping container. The palm alone could have covered a basketball court. It descended from above the skyline like the judgment of an angry god, smashing through the top floors of a twenty-story building with all the effort of a child brushing aside a sandcastle.
Glass rained down in glittering sheets. Concrete exploded outward in chunks the size of cars. The sound was biblical. A roar of destruction that drowned out every other noise in the city.
And then the Zero Pointer rose from behind the buildings.
Holy shit.
It wasn't a robot.
Calling it a robot was like calling the ocean a puddle. Like calling a hurricane a breeze. This thing was a walking natural disaster wrapped in green-painted steel. It had to be at least fifty meters tall. Maybe sixty. Its single eye glowed red in the artificial sunlight, a baleful spotlight that swept across the battlefield like the gaze of something that had crawled out of the apocalypse to say hello.
That's not a test. That's a war crime.
Other students saw it too.
The reaction was immediate. Visceral. Primal.
A boy with a rock-based Quirk simply sat down in the middle of the street, his legs giving out beneath him. A girl who'd been confidently shooting lasers five minutes ago started crying. Someone screamed "WE'RE GONNA DIE" at a pitch that probably shattered windows in the next prefecture.
The carefully organized exam had just become a genuine survival horror movie.
And everyone was an extra.
The Zero Pointer's foot came down on a city block. The impact registered on the Richter scale. Buildings crumbled. Debris fountained into the sky. Students scattered like ants fleeing a magnifying glass.
Izuku watched the whole thing with cold, analytical eyes.
Zero points. A situational hazard. An absolute waste of time and energy. The smart play is to disengage and hunt for stragglers in the east sector. There's probably a bunch of one-pointers left over there that everyone else abandoned.
He turned to Jiro, his voice completely level. "Useless. Let's go. We can still rack up points before the buzzer."
He started moving.
Jiro didn't follow.
Izuku got three steps before he noticed the absence of angry footsteps behind him. He turned back. "Compass? Let's move."
She wasn't looking at him. Her jacks were extended, trembling, pointed in the direction of the Zero Pointer like dowsing rods. Her face had gone from pale to chalk-white.
"Jiro."
"Shut up."
"We don't have time for—"
"There's a girl stuck."
The words came out quiet. Almost whispered. Lost in the rumble of the approaching colossus.
"She's hurt. I can hear her crying. She's saying 'please help' over and over and she's right in that thing's path and she's going to die if we don't—"
Izuku's head snapped back toward her. His green eyes burned with an intensity that made Jiro take a step back.
"Where?"
Jiro pointed frantically toward the Zero Pointer. "That way! Maybe four hundred meters! But we'll never make it in time, the thing is moving too fast and the debris field is—"
Izuku turned around.
He crouched down.
"Get on."
Jiro stared at his back like he'd just suggested they defeat the robot with interpretive dance. "What?"
"I need my hands free. Piggyback. Now."
"Are you insane?! I can't just—"
"Do you want to save her or not?"
The words hit like a slap. Jiro's mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.
No sound came out.
"Clock's ticking, Compass."
She didn't have time to argue. She didn't have time to think. She jumped.