Chapter Eight: The Pink Hurricane and The Boy of Scrap Metal
The dust-choked silence that followed the end-of-exam buzzer was a physical thing, settling over the ruined mock city like a grimy blanket.
It was punctuated only by the distant crunch of settling rubble, the faint hiss of a ruptured hydraulic line from a fallen zero-pointer, and the collective, ragged exhalation of eighty exhausted teenagers.
(Suzuki) stood amidst the aftermath, the actuators in his boots giving a final, weary click-whirr as they powered down.
His body ached in a symphony of specific pains—a throbbing tempo in his shoulder from a near-miss, a staccato pinch in his ribs from an awkward landing.
The reinforced gauntlet on his right hand felt suddenly heavy, a chunk of pragmatic, unglamorous metal.
"It seems the test is over," he thought, the observation bland and factual in his mind, a sterile note in the ledger of the day's events.
He began mentally tallying rescue points, a dry internal accounting that was far more comforting than acknowledging the lingering adrenaline jittering in his hands.
Crunch. Crunch-Crunch-CRUNCH.
The sound wasn't settling rubble.
It was too rhythmic, too purposeful, and it was getting louder at an alarming rate.
He looked up.
A pink blur was tearing across the decimated plaza, kicking up a plume of dust and debris in its wake.
It was a person, running with the unbridled, terrifying velocity of a heat-seeking missile fueled by pure, uncut curiosity.
(Suzuki) recognized her in an instant, a flash of vibrant color against the gray devastation.
The pink hair was a dead giveaway, a shock of cotton-candy chaos even in this landscape of ruin.
He had approximately one second to process this before the human projectile screeched to a halt in front of him, sneakers carving twin trenches in the dirt with a sound like SKREEE-ECH!
(Mina Ashido) leaned in, her pink skin slightly flushed from exertion, her golden eyes wide as satellite dishes. She didn't so much break the silence as detonate it.
"OH MY GOSH! HOW DID YOU DO THAT?!"
Her voice wasn't just loud; it was a sonic event. It cracked through the post-battle calm like a whip, startling a flock of imaginary birds and causing several nearby examinees to jump.
Heads swiveled. Eyes, previously glazed with exhaustion or self-absorption, focused on (Suzuki).
They looked at him as if he'd just spontaneously grown a second head that was reciting heroic epic poetry.
Which, in a way, he supposed he had done something equally bizarre.
It was true, after his confrontation with the robot, he had continued trying to save more test participants.
Therefore, he had encountered many of them at the same time.
He had tried as much as he could to gather whatever rescue points he could obtain.
So, he sighed.
The sigh was a small, contained release of pressure, lost in the wake of (Mina)'s vocal explosion.
He was fairly confident he would be able to join under normal circumstances.
All that remained was for the other teachers and the pros watching the test to agree.
Of course, there was a chance they would refuse.
But that would tarnish this academy's reputation, especially since there was no existing law at the academy that stated individuals without Quirks or special abilities could not enter.
The reason most people without special abilities didn't take the test was simply because it was an unofficial thing, like a word said by someone that everyone else followed.
So they didn't try to enter, even though there were many opportunities, especially if one used support gear.
But no one ever did that.
Anyway, the voice of (Mina Ashido) was making (Suzuki) unable to continue his train of thought.
Her presence was a cognitive firewall.
"Was that your weird Quirk? Tell me!"
She seemed to have no concept of personal space or privacy, leaning so close he could see the tiny, excited flecks of amber in her irises.
She smelled like ozone and something vaguely citrusy.
At the same time, for (Suzuki), dealing with an excited girl like (Mina) felt incredibly strange.
He'd spent a long time—six years, to be exact—without any friends or meaningful social interactions, not counting his grandmother, his tutors, and the various shopkeepers and craftsmen he'd pestered for information on materials and tooling.
Those were transactional. This was… an ambush.
In the moment this question was asked, he fell silent for a beat.
The silence stretched, thin and awkward, filled only by the tap-tap-tap of her finger impatiently drumming against her thigh.
Then he said it.
"I don't possess any supernatural power or Quirk."
He said it in a moment, as if stating something ordinary.
The way he said it—flat, factual, devoid of any drama—was like tossing a lit match into a room everyone had forgotten was filled with fireworks.
Fwoom.
The reaction wasn't audible, but it was palpable. A wave of tangible shock rippled out from their little epicenter.
The other participants who had been looking at him, plus (Mina), stared at him with utter disbelief, as if they couldn't process the words they had just heard.
Their jaws might as well have been hanging on rusty hinges, producing a collective, silent creak.
"You… you don't have a Quirk? At all?" someone muttered from the edge of the growing circle, the words slipping out like a leaked secret.
But (Mina Ashido), who had heard this news, had her expression transform from excitement to something resembling a contained supernova.
Her golden eyes went impossibly wider.
Her pink brows shot up towards her hairline.
"WHAAAAAAAAAT?!"
It wasn't a question. It was a system reboot delivered at full volume.
Before (Suzuki) could even blink, her hands shot out—swish-thwip!—and seized his forearm, the one not encased in the bulky gauntlet.
She began to shake him.
Not a gentle, "are you okay?" shake.
This was a full-bodied, "I-am-trying-to-see-if-your-teeth-rattle" tremor.
Rattle-rattle-clack. His tools in their pouches protested the motion.
(Suzuki) quickly realized the girl's physical strength.
She was strong. Very strong. Her grip was like a friendly, yet unyielding, vice.
But that didn't detach him from this bizarre interaction. It just made him acutely aware of his own potential for being disassembled by a pink-haired force of nature.
He managed to get a word in edgewise as his head wobbled on his neck.
"You… don't have a problem… with me not having a Quirk?"
He said it in his usual, measured tone, a stark contrast to her seismic energy.
Her red eyes—no, golden, he corrected himself—were staring into space as if she'd just seen a UFO materialize.
In the end, he also had no problem with people who had powers.
But in a world like this, which reinforced the concept that those without Quirks were strange, odd people, it was bizarre that the girl had this kind of nature.
He vaguely recalled the manga mentioning she was this type of person, but it had been six years, and his memories of the characters' natures were starting to fade a little.
Even though he had written notes, he recalled them in flashes, not in full, vivid detail.
(Mina)'s brain seemed to finish rebooting. Her gaze snapped back to him, brighter than ever.
"Why would I have a problem? THIS IS AWESOME! Does this mean you use this gear?"
The girl pointed at his equipment.
Her finger, tipped with a neat nail, gestured to the gauntlet he was still wearing, and the boot equipped with a retractable grappling hook and a secondary propulsion system mounted in it—the system that had allowed him to reach the ground and not fall like a maniac from 15 meters up after his rooftop dismount.
(Suzuki) didn't know what to say at this moment.
So he told her the truth.
It seemed that even now, he hadn't fully realized that the teenager in front of him genuinely had no issue with his Quirklessness.
That fact left him mildly, and ironically, stunned.
After all, he had spent over six years in this world and knew it literally inside out.
Society's general attitude toward the Quirkless was… not great.
To those with Quirks, at least 60 or 70% of them, the Quirkless were like a strange, mild disease.
People looked at them as if they were oddities, as if they hadn't reached the evolutionary stage the Quirk users had.
He'd seen the looks, heard the whispers—the subtle tsk of pity, the not-so-subtle sneers.
"Yes. I used this gear. I made it myself."
The words left his mouth, simple and unadorned.
(Mina) looked at the gear again, her head tilting with a soft pop from her neck.
Her eyes traveled over the scuffed metal, the custom welds, the carefully routed cables.
Then she looked back at (Suzuki), and her smile could have powered a small city.
"That's SO COOL! I can't believe it! You made it yourself? Are you, like, some kind of genius?"
(Suzuki) wanted to scoff at the term.
Genius.
It sounded like a term from a shonen manga—which, technically, he was in—but it felt absurdly grandiose, like a title bestowed upon a child prophet.
Maybe the reason he felt that way was because he knew, down to his bones, how far he was from being a genius.
All that had happened was that his mind, which had been that of an adult placed into a child's body, had been able to absorb information quickly through study.
He hadn't been distracted by any other emotions besides training and understanding the resources he needed, plus improving his tools.
For six years, he had nothing else on his mind.
Honestly, if he hadn't reached this level and couldn't make these things, he would honestly consider himself very stupid, not a genius.
As for this term he'd just heard from the girl, it began to feel deeply, profoundly sarcastic to him.
So, he smiled a wry, self-deprecating smile.
"I should really tell you, I'm not a genius. All I'm doing is something any ordinary person who wants to be a hero would do."
He said it with such sincere, conviction that the circle of onlookers stared at him as if he were insane.
Their collective gaze seemed to be asking him directly: Is it ordinary for someone with no Quirk to take on a robot over 12 meters tall? To save a bunch of people mid-exam while taking out smaller robots, all using some homemade gadgets?
One boy with rock-like skin blinked slowly, the sound like two pebbles grinding together. Krkkt.
A girl with vine-like hair let her appendages droop in apparent disbelief.
But of course, (Suzuki) didn't pay them any mind.
He was focused on the girl, who had acquired a look of pure, unadulterated sincerity.
"That's SO amazing! You're amazing, (Saito)!"
The girl said his given name in a very familiar way, as if she were breaking down the formal barrier that Japanese people typically used.
Her voice was warm, inviting.
At the same time, (Suzuki) didn't know what to say.
For him, he couldn't bring himself to correct her and tell her to just call him by his family name.
After all, he had problems with conversation.
He was starting to suspect he had some issues with social skills, lost due to continuous training and immersion in study.
His social muscles had atrophied, leaving him fluent in mechanics and combat tactics, but a stumbling novice in casual chat.
KRA-KOOM!!
An explosion detonated nearby, the sound wave hitting them a moment later with a physical whump that stirred up dust.
(Katsuki Bakugo) had arrived.
He stomped into the periphery, his grenade-like gauntlets still smoking, his expression one of supreme, expected triumph.
He had demolished numerous robots. The evidence was written in the scuffs on his costume and the arrogant set of his shoulders.
He looked at the group of students, expecting praise, adulation, the awed stares that were his due.
But most of the students were looking in one direction.
Toward the blue-haired boy talking to the pink-haired girl.
They seemed far more interested in him than in the Explosion Boy.
(Bakugo)'s eye twitched. A tiny, almost imperceptible tic.
The smoking palm of his hand gave a sizzling crackle-pop.
"WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!" he roared, his voice a gravelly explosion of its own. "WHY THE FUCK ARE THEY STARING AT THAT DAMN EXTRA?!"
His voice was fierce, as if he were waiting for someone to answer him.
But in the end, no one looked at him.
They were still staring, transfixed, at the other boy.
The boy whose voice—calm, quiet, and utterly insane—was still ringing in their heads: "I don't possess any supernatural power or Quirk."
The statement hung in the air, more disruptive than any explosion, more fascinating than any flashy power.
It was a concept so outlandish, so contrary to the world's logic, that it demanded attention.
(Bakugo) stood there, fumes literally rising from his palms, the ignored center of a universe that had just decided to orbit a strange, blue-haired moon made of scrap metal and sheer, unbelievable audacity.
His teeth ground together with an audible screee.
The comedy was dark, painted in shades of societal absurdity and one boy's social ineptitude.
The tragedy was that no one, not even the furious blonde bomber, could look away.
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End of Chapter.
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📝 A Note to Readers:
This chapter explored the immediate aftermath of the practical exam through a lens of social awkwardness and societal shock. What did you think of Suzuki's blunt revelation and Mina's unfiltered reaction? How do you see the dynamics shifting with characters like Bakugo entering the mix? Your thoughts, predictions, and critiques are what make sharing this story rewarding! Please feel free to leave a comment below.
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