-Only 700 meters? What a weakling. If we used our web for a sling to throw it, we could send it over ten times that.-
Izuku didn't know how to use a sling, but this honestly didn't sound too bad. It really was just his regular training regiment.
...
The rest of the class let out sounds of excitement, the prospect of getting to use their quirks to their fullest bringing out feelings of excitement.
Someone, somewhere said, "Looks like fun!"
"It looks… Like fun, you say?"
This time there were actual emotions in his words. Anger to be specific.
"So you were planning on spending your three years here… Planning on having a good time? What happened to becoming heroes?"
He made a motion covering his face with his hand like he was face-palming from their reaction.
"Alright then. New rule. Whoever gets the least total points will be judged hopeless, and instantly expelled."
Izuku's heart stopped a beat, panic flooding his head… until he realized there was no way in hell he'd end up on the bottom of that list.
Still, he shared the opinion of his shocked classmates. Holy shit, it was an incredibly cruel thing to drop on them, much less on the first day and the first exercise.
Aizawa pulled his hand up to push up his hair and gave a sadistic smile.
"Our "freedom" means we dispense with students as we please! Welcome to… The departments of heroics!"
Once again it was Uraraka who put the class feelings into words.
"The kid who ranks last… Gets expelled?! This is our first day here! But even if it weren't… That's WAY too unreasonable!"
Aizawa took being questioned in stride and as he let his hair down he went back to his previous way of speaking.
"Natural disasters... Massive accidents… Ego-Mad Villains… All kinds of calamities can happen when we least expect them. At the moment, Japan is for all intents and purposes drenched in unreasonable."
"If you were counting on a friendly chat after school at the local McDonald's, too bad. From now on, and for the next three years… All you can expect from your life at Yuei, is one hardship after another."
"This is "Plus Ultra". I expect you to overcome these trials and rise to the top."
He gave another grin, though this time without sadism, as he motioned with his finger upwards to the sky.
"Well, that sounds easy enough." Venom said suddenly and without warning, interrupting Aizawa as he was about to. Say something more.
Izuku froze completely as everyone's eyes turned to him and Venom(who was currently on his left shoulder). Bakugou was positioned so he couldn't get a good look at Izuku, but he frowned at the deeper voice.
Aizawa looked at first at Venom, then Izuku, then back to Venom again.
"You're that spider guy Vlad wanted so much… So, you think rising to the top will be easy, do you?"
Izuku stammered. "No-I…"
"Alright, second and third rule. Midoriya, since you think being number one will be easy, if you don't score as the overall number one, you'll also be expelled. Also, if anyone decides to hold back to let Izuku achieve that, they'll also be expelled."
Izuku almost shut down completely, and could only gape and stare at Aizawa, as he divided them up into pairs to do the exercises.
-Well… Shit.-
...
"How did you DO THAT by just OPENING YOUR MOUTH?!"
-Well, how were we supposed to know the guy was so unstable he picks on anyone with any confidence? And anyway, this shouldn't be too hard to do. Other than Uraraka, none here is a challenge to us."
Izuku bit his lip. Holy shit this had turned into a nightmare quickly!
"It doesn't matter if it's only one who's better than us!!! If we don't make it to the damn top, we'll be expelled!!!"
-Then just beat her then. It's not too complicated. Plus Ultra or whatever that nonsense was.-
He said that as I'd it was just the easier thing in the world.
Beating Uraraka in ball throwing, proved impossible anyway, as using whatever the gravity part of her was, she got an infinity on the ball throw.
Izuku could just stare in numbed shock as he realized he had already lost one contest to Uraraka.
Finally as it was his turn, Iida put his hand on his shoulder. "Do not worry Midoriya! You'll do just fine, I have no doubts!"
"Thanks…" Nice to see someone else had confidence in him.
As he went up to the circle, he muttered one short question out loud.
"How do we do this?"
-Just a regular throw. You don't know how to use a sling and the circle is too short for us to teach you on the spot. So just throw it regularly.-
Right. He couldn't achieve number one in this trial, but he could damn well make sure he came second place. Easy.
As he walked, he could feel both the second skin attach spread out under his gym clothes and the sleeves of his uniform being pulled up.
Picking up the ball, he took deep breaths to steel himself. Easy, you got this Izuku.
He thought back to the beach, and how he'd once thrown a microwave from one side of the beach to the other. He was much stronger now. He could do this.
He could feel his muscles tense, as he put all his muscles to use as he pulled his arm back before the throw.
The actual throw produced a small Shockwave, though nowhere near as loud, large, or flashy as Katsuki's bigass explosion had.
More like a sniper rifle than any bomb.
He stared after it, off into the distance before it left even his capacity to see it any more against the blue sky.
A sound from Aizawa's phone finally signaled it had hit the ground.
Izuku turned anxiously to look, but he heard his classmates squee over the answer before he saw it.
"WOW!!! Over 4 kilometers!"
The actual distance was 4027 meters. That was good… great even! Let's see someone else top that!
Someone who wasn't impressed was Katsuki.
Izuku instinctual recognized Katsuki's scream, even if he didn't process the words at that moment.
Anger burned through his body, as every sinew of muscle, and every bone he had prepared for combat, as he snapped around, prepared for battle, Venom's black liquid encasing his body from the top of his head to the bottom of his toes.
He would crush Katsuki, he would-
As Katsuki was launching himself at Izuku with his explosions, he suddenly stopped dead in his tracks as his hands suddenly stopped producing explosions, and a bunch of white bands wrapped around his body, preventing him from advancing any further.
Izuku blinked at the sight of the bands, then turned to look at the source, which was Aizawa.
"It's my special "capturing weapon", a steel wire alloy woven with carbon nanofibers. As for my quirk-"
"Oh my god!" Izuku exclaimed loudly, a light going off in his head. Under Aizawa's bands which had been wrapped around his neck, was a rather distinct set of goggles.
"With those goggles and that weapon, you must be Eraserhead! The erasing hero, whose quirk is Erasure! You're the famous underground hero who can shut down any quirk by just looking at them! Born on November 8, in Tokyo, you are 30 years old, 183 cm tall, your blood type's B, you are famous for picking up stray cats and you had a romantic relationship with fellow hero Ms. Joke, real name-" "That's enough." Aizawa shut him down coldly. He paused for a second or two before he added. "Also the last part was wrong."
-Thanks for the exposition dump Izuku. Anything more to add?- Venom asked in a tone mixing sarcasm, praise, and genuine curiousness.
Izuku almost answered him, until he realized his sensei had told him to shut up.
"Anyway… Yeah, my quirk is Erasure. I can cancel out any quirks you guys have. Don't make me use too much though, I have dry eye."
"Anyhow…" He released Katsuki and retracted his cloth.
"We're wasting time. Get back in line Bakugou. I won't tolerate a second outburst from you today."
It wasn't before Katsuki was forced to go back in line, Izuku realized his body was still tense as hell, fully expecting a battle with Katsuki at any moment.
-Don't worry. We'll settle the score ONCE AND FOR ALL eventually.-
Yeah. They would. It felt so strange to embrace the rage openly. He clenched his fist. Back in middle school, he had pretended this rage wasn't there, he had been quiet and hoped desperately he wouldn't have to fight him.
Hell, he'd even made sure not to arrive at his middle school to pick up his graduation papers until Katsuki had left, fully accepting the angry words he got for being late. All so he wouldn't have to actually confront Katsuki.
Now…
Now he felt actual disappointment that he DIDN'T get to fight and crush Katsuki.
He was still dealing with, and trying to make sense of those feelings, when his test partner Momo created an artillery cannon and blew his 4 Kilometers out of the water, with 28 kilometers.
Izuku just stared as he realized he suddenly was third place.
...
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