The first shock was the feel of him.
His back was a wall. Not metaphorically. Not poetically. His back was literally a wall of dense, compact muscle that felt like armor plating wrapped in a gym outfit. Her hands touched down on his shoulders and she could feel the cords of tension running under his skin like steel cables.
What the hell is this guy made of?!
"Wrap your legs tight around my waist."
His voice was different now. Low. Serious. The playful mockery had evaporated completely.
"And your arms around my neck. Don't let go no matter what."
Jiro's face went red. Her brain, which had been struggling to process the last thirty seconds, finally threw up its metaphorical hands and surrendered to the chaos.
She did as she was told.
Her thighs clamped against his sides. Her chest pressed flush against his back. Her arms wrapped around his neck, fingers lacing together. She could feel the heat radiating off him. Could feel the steady thump of his heartbeat against her own chest.
This is the most intimate thing I've ever done with another human being and we're about to die.
Every muscle in Izuku's body tensed at once.
And then he moved.
The acceleration hit Jiro like a physical force, snapping her head back, driving the air from her lungs. One second they were standing in an alley. The next second the alley was twenty meters behind them and rapidly shrinking.
The city became a blur.
Buildings transformed into smears of color. Debris became abstract shapes. The wind screamed past her ears so loud it drowned out everything else. She couldn't hear her own thoughts. Could barely hear her own heartbeat.
Izuku moved with a terrifying, ground-eating grace that defied everything Jiro thought she knew about human locomotion. He vaulted over a pile of rubble without breaking stride. Used a collapsed wall as a springboard to launch himself onto a rooftop. Crossed the rooftop in three steps and dropped back to street level like gravity was a suggestion rather than a law.
This is insane. This is completely insane. He's Quirkless?! QUIRKLESS?! Does the word Quirkless mean something different where he comes from?!
Every powerful stride sent a shockwave through both their bodies. Every sharp turn pressed her tighter against his back. She could feel the sheer, impossible power coiling and uncoiling in his legs. Could feel his back muscles working beneath her chest like pistons in an engine.
It was terrifying.
It was exhilarating.
It was, without question, the most intensely physical experience of her entire life, and it was happening while a building-sized robot tried to step on people fifty meters ahead of them.
She's a lot lighter than a refrigerator.
The thought floated through Izuku's mind with perfect, deadpan clarity.
Much more pleasant to carry, too. Softer in all the right places. The fridge never had—focus, idiot. Girl in danger. Save girl. Flirt later.
He pushed harder.
The Zero Pointer was ahead of them now, its massive form filling the sky. Each step it took sent tremors through the ground. Dust and debris rained from damaged buildings. Students fled in every direction, their screams adding to the chaos.
Jiro's voice cut through the wind, barely audible against his ear. "There! On the left!"
Izuku saw her.
A girl with short brown hair. Cute, round face. Big brown eyes that were currently filled with tears. She was flat on her back in the middle of the street, one leg pinned under a massive slab of concrete that must have fallen from one of the destroyed buildings.
She was trying to push the concrete away with her hands. It wasn't moving.
The Zero Pointer's foot rose into the sky like a descending eclipse.
"She's in its path," Jiro whispered. "Oh god, she's directly in its path."
Izuku didn't slow down.
The foot began to descend.
The brown-haired girl looked up. Her eyes went wide. Not with fear anymore. With acceptance. The kind of look that said she'd already calculated the math and come up short.
Izuku's speed, already impossible by any reasonable standard, increased.
The world narrowed to a single point. A single objective. A single, desperate goal that burned in his chest like a star going supernova.
Faster.
His legs screamed in protest. His lungs burned. Every muscle in his body was operating at maximum capacity, pushing past limits he didn't know he had.
FASTER.
The foot was coming down. Thirty meters of reinforced steel descending with the inevitability of a natural disaster. There was no dodging it. No blocking it. No surviving it.
Unless someone got there first.
Unless someone got the girl out of the way.
Unless someone did something monumentally, catastrophically stupid.
Jiro felt the change in his movement. Felt his body coil like a spring. Felt the raw, desperate power gathering in his legs.
"Broccoli, what are you—"
He launched.
The world tilted. Air rushed past them. For one heart-stopping moment, they were airborne, a green-and-black blur hurtling through the shadow of a descending apocalypse.
The trapped girl saw them coming. Her eyes went wide again. This time with confusion. Then recognition. Then hope.
Izuku's feet hit the ground next to her with enough force to crack the pavement.
He was already moving. Already reaching for the concrete. Already calculating angles and leverage and the precise amount of force needed to—
The shadow fell over all three of them.
The foot was coming down.
Ten seconds.
Maybe less.
Jiro heard herself scream something. She wasn't sure what. Probably a profanity. Possibly several.
Izuku's hands wrapped around the edge of the concrete slab.
The muscles in his back, the ones Jiro was currently pressed against, contracted with the kind of force that moved mountains.
The concrete groaned.
Come on. Come on. COME ON.
The foot descended.
Five seconds.
The concrete shifted. Not much. An inch. Maybe two. But it was enough.
"PULL YOUR LEG OUT!" Izuku roared.
The brown-haired girl didn't need to be told twice. She yanked her leg free with a yelp of pain, her foot sliding out of the gap Izuku had created.
Three seconds.
Izuku dropped the concrete. Grabbed the girl. Threw her over his shoulder like a sack of rice.
One girl on his back. One girl over his shoulder.
Two hundred kilograms of training weights had prepared him for this exact moment.
Hano, you beautiful, sadistic old bastard. I take back every bad thing I ever said about those weights.
He ran.
The foot crashed down behind them.
The impact was beyond sound. Beyond sensation. It was a wall of force that picked Izuku up and threw him forward like a leaf in a hurricane. He hit the ground rolling, twisted his body to protect both passengers, and came up running without missing a beat.
Debris rained around them. Dust clouds billowed. The world was chaos and noise and the lingering echo of destruction.
But they were alive.
They were alive.
Izuku didn't stop running until they were three blocks away, well clear of the Zero Pointer's path. Only then did he slow down. Only then did he let himself breathe.
He set the brown-haired girl down gently on a relatively clean patch of sidewalk. Then he crouched, letting Jiro slide off his back.
Both girls stared at him.
The brown-haired girl was crying.
"You... you saved me... I thought I was gonna... I was gonna..."
"Die horribly under a giant robot foot?" Izuku offered. "Yeah, that would've sucked. Your name?"
"U-Uraraka. Ochaco Uraraka."
"I'm Izuku Midoriya. That's Kyoka Jiro. She's the one who heard you crying. I just did the heavy lifting."
Jiro was still staring at him. Her face had gone through so many colors in the last five minutes that she'd basically invented new shades.
"You..." she started.
"Yes?"
"That was..."
"Badass?"
"Insane. That was insane. We almost died. All three of us almost died."
Izuku shrugged. "But we didn't."
"THAT'S NOT THE POINT!"
Present Mic's voice cut through the chaos one final time.
"AND THAT'S TIME, LISTENERS! PENCILS DOWN, FISTS UNCLENCHED, THE ENTRANCE EXAM IS OFFICIALLY OVER!"