His stance shifted. Right foot planted at a forty-five-degree angle. Left foot forward. Knees slightly bent. Weight centered low. His sensei's voice echoed through his memory.
Everything you have. Everything you are. Channel it through one point.
His core tightened. His shoulder rotated back. Every muscle in his body coiled like a spring compressed past its breaking point.
Then he released.
The throw wasn't silent. It screamed. The ball left his hand with a sound like tearing fabric, a crack of displaced air that made several students flinch. His entire body torqued through the motion. His feet didn't leave the circle, but the ground beneath him cracked from the transferred force.
The ball became a white streak against the blue sky. It climbed. And climbed. And kept climbing until it was nothing but a speck, then less than a speck, then gone entirely.
The device in Aizawa's hand beeped.
The teacher looked at it. His expression didn't change. He took his time, letting the moment stretch until the silence became unbearable.
Then he turned the screen toward the class.
276.89 meters.
Izuku rolled his shoulder, feeling the pleasant burn of exertion. His arm would ache tomorrow. Worth it.
He looked directly at Aizawa. "How's that for zero potential, sensei?"
Aizawa's face remained impassive. But for a single instant, maybe a nanosecond, the corner of his mouth twitched upward.
Then it was gone, suppressed beneath layers of professional exhaustion.
"Adequate."
He tucked the device into his pocket and moved on.
But Izuku caught it. That momentary flicker. That ghost of a smirk.
He walked out of the circle.
And felt Bakugo's eyes boring into his back like twin drills.
The explosive boy stood at the edge of the crowd, his fists clenched so tight his knuckles had gone white. His jaw was locked. A vein pulsed in his temple. But there was something else in those crimson eyes now.
Something beyond rage.
Fear.
The "loser" who had cleaned up a beach for ten months, the Quirkless nobody who was supposed to stay in his place, had just outthrown him by almost eighty meters without a single explosion.
809 meters with a Quirk.
276 without one.
The math didn't matter. What mattered was the statement.
I don't need what you have. I never did.
Izuku smiled at him. Pleasant. Infuriating.
Bakugo's palms sparked.
But he didn't move.
The tests continued, but the atmosphere on the field had fundamentally shifted.
Ochaco bounced along on his right, her earlier tears replaced by a radiant smile. Toru floated on his left, her invisible form somehow conveying smug satisfaction through posture alone. And Jiro walked slightly behind, her jacks curled defensively around her shoulders, pretending she wasn't part of this formation at all.
Izuku let the silence stretch for a few paces. Then he spoke.
"Hey. Thanks for that, back there. The three of you."
His voice was quiet. Genuine. None of his usual teasing or provocation.
Ochaco beamed. "Of course! He was being totally unfair! You'd just saved me during the entrance exam and he was acting like you were worthless!"
"No way we were gonna let him talk to you like that!" Toru's uniform sleeves pumped in what appeared to be a victory gesture. "You're, like, literally the strongest person here and he was trying to make you look bad! Unacceptable!"
Izuku turned to Jiro.
She crossed her arms. Looked away. Her jacks twitched.
"Don't get the wrong idea." Her voice came out sharper than necessary. "If you got expelled, I wouldn't have anyone to watch fail at their stupid harem fantasy."
A pause.
"Besides." Her cheeks colored slightly. "Someone's gotta protect the other girls from you."
Izuku gave her a knowing look. "Right. 'Protecting' them." He let the words linger. "I'll be sure to thank you for your service, Compass."
Her jacks snapped upward like angry serpents.
"Stop calling me that!"
"Never."
Ochaco giggled. Toru's uniform shook with suppressed laughter.
Jiro's face went from pink to crimson. She sped up, putting distance between herself and the group.
The long-distance run was a war of attrition.
One by one, students dropped out. Kaminari collapsed at the 800-meter mark, sprawled dramatically across the track and declaring himself "spiritually deceased." Mineta quit at 600 meters, claiming his tiny legs were a "biological disadvantage" that the school should accommodate. Sero ran out of tape to swing from and had to finish on foot, which lasted approximately 200 more meters before he joined Kaminari on the ground.
The final stretch came down to two figures.
Momo Yaoyorozu pedaled gracefully on a sleek, black carbon-fiber road bike.
Beside her, keeping pace without any visible strain, was Izuku.
He jogged with the easy rhythm of someone out for a morning run.
The contrast was almost comical.
High-tech engineering versus human endurance. Quirk-enhanced capability versus pure physical training.
And somehow, impossibly, they were dead even.
Izuku called out to Aizawa, who watched from the finish line with his stopwatch.
"Hey, teach! Is that even legal?"
Aizawa didn't look up. "It's a product of her Quirk. It's legal."
"Thought so."
Izuku turned to Momo, matching her pace. A teasing grin spread across his face.
"Hey, Cheat Code! Think you can make another one of those for me?"
"With your stamina, Midoriya-san, I don't think you'll need it."
Oh?
That was unexpected. The heiress had teeth.
"Careful," Izuku said. "That almost sounded like a compliment."
"It was an observation." Her eyes returned to the track ahead. "Your physical conditioning is remarkable."
"You've been watching me?"
"I watch everyone." A pause. "You were simply... more interesting than most."
They crossed the finish line together. Aizawa marked something on his clipboard without comment.
Momo dismounted from her bike. She stood beside him, barely winded, and inclined her head in what might have been acknowledgment.
"Good run, Midoriya-san."
"Likewise, Yaoyorozu."
She walked away toward the water station, her posture perfect, her expression returning to its default composed state.
But Izuku had seen beneath the mask. Just for a moment.
Competitive. Observant. And she hides her curiosity behind formality.
===
Finally, the tests were over.
Twenty exhausted students gathered before the main building, their blue and white uniforms stained with sweat and grass and dirt. Some stood. Some sat. Mineta lay flat on his back, staring at the sky with the hollow expression of a man contemplating his own mortality.
Aizawa stood before them, his posture unchanged despite the hours of observation. He held up his phone, and a holographic display materialized in the air.
"Final rankings."
The list appeared:
Momo Yaoyorozu
Katsuki Bakugo
Hitomi Todoroki
Tenya Iida
Fumikage Tokoyami
Izuku Midoriya
Mezo Shoji
Mawata Fuwa
Eijiro Kirishima
Mina Ashido
Ochaco Uraraka
Yui Kodai
Rikido Sato
Tsuyu Asui
Yuga Aoyama
Hanta Sero
Denki Kaminari
Kyoka Jiro
Toru Hagakure
Minoru Mineta
The grape-headed boy made a sound like a dying animal. His face had gone pale. Tears welled in his eyes.
"No... no, no, no..."
"Oh, and by the way." Aizawa's voice remained completely flat. "The expulsion thing was a logical ruse."
Silence.
Then chaos.
"A WHAT?!"
"You mean we weren't actually gonna get expelled?!"
"I almost had a heart attack!"
"Sensei, that was incredibly stressful!"
Mineta burst into tears of relief, collapsing backward onto the ground. Kaminari sat down hard, his head in his hands. Mina let out a string of colorful language that would have made a sailor blush.
Momo's expression remained composed. She nodded once, as if confirming a hypothesis.
"I suspected as much. A rational educator would not expel a student on their first day without allowing them to demonstrate growth potential."
Izuku watched her from the corner of his eye.
No, you didn't. You were just as tense as the rest of us. Your hands were clenched during the rankings. Your breathing was too controlled. You just hide it better.
He kept the observation to himself.
Aizawa cut through the noise with a single, tired wave of his hand. The class fell silent.
"Your uniforms are in the classroom. Go change." He turned away. "Class is over."
He disappeared into the building before anyone could respond.
===
The hallway was empty.
Shota Aizawa walked alone, his footsteps echoing against sterile tile. He pulled a bottle of eye drops from his pocket and tilted his head back, letting the cold liquid soothe his overworked eyes.
A figure stepped out from a side corridor.
Aizawa didn't need to look to know who it was. The masssive frame, the wild blond hair, the perpetual aura of suppressed heroic energy.
Toshinori Yagi blocked his path.
"That was a low blow, Aizawa."
The Symbol of Peace's voice was quiet.
"Singling out the boy like that. I thought you were on his side."
Aizawa pocketed his eye drops. He looked utterly exhausted, more so than usual, but his voice emerged sharp as a scalpel.
"Hypothetically, All Might. If a hero with a fire Quirk fails to save someone from a burning building, the world grieves. 'What a tragedy.' 'He tried his best.' 'Not all battles can be won.'"
He paused. "But if he fails... a Quirkless hero..."
His tired eyes met Toshinori's.
"They won't grieve. They'll crucify him."
The words landed like stones.
"'Why did they send the Quirkless kid?'
'This is what happens when you let them play hero.'
'He never should have been allowed in the program.'
'His teachers failed him by giving him false hope.'"
Aizawa's voice remained flat.
"The world isn't ready for him. The Hero Public Safety Commission isn't ready for him. The media will tear him apart the moment he stumbles. And he will stumble. Everyone does."
Toshinori said nothing.
"Hound Dog's concerns during the faculty meeting were valid, if misplaced. Izuku Midoriya is a one-of-a-kind situation." Aizawa ran a hand through his hair, pushing the dark strands away from his face. "It is my logical duty, to prepare him for that harsh reality. He needs to be so undeniably competent, so ruthlessly prepared, that their arguments become irrelevant."
He started to walk past All Might, then paused.
A flicker of something almost like approval crossed his tired features.
"He's walking on a tightrope no one else in this school has to walk. He needs to know what that feels like." His voice softened, just slightly.
"And it's a good sign... that he already has people willing to walk it with him."
He resumed walking, his capture scarf trailing behind him like a shadow.
"Those three girls didn't hesitate. They saw injustice and they acted. That's the making of real heroes." His voice drifted back down the empty hallway. "And it's good for him to know he's not alone."