The instant Zoro drew his blade, the air in the arena changed completely.
Gang Orca still had Shindo held in both hands, lifting him upward, preparing to strike him with the supersonic wave at point blank range.
Then Zoro moved.
At a speed beyond what the eye could track, he closed the distance to the professional hero before the strike could finish.
Orca heard only one sound.
Tsshhk.
Zoro passed beside him like a black shadow, then vanished from sight entirely.
An attack executed with terrifying precision, carrying enough force to rip Shindo from his grip through sheer shock, and Orca's mind hadn't caught up with what had just happened.
"Shishi Sonson."
Then silence dropped over everything.
In front of Orca, Shindo hit the ground. He didn't understand what had just occurred either.
But something else had caught his attention far more.
Behind Orca, a few steps away, Zoro was already standing. His body leaned slightly forward, one foot planted on the ground, the other trailing half a step behind. His shoulders tilted lightly, his head lowered a fraction.
His hand rested over his sword hilt, guiding it back into its sheath slowly and quietly.
Then came the sound.
Clank. Clank. Tick. Click.
Small pieces of armor scattered in front of Shindo, one after another. Orca's eyes dropped to his own chest, where the blade had struck the armor he wore. Part of it had shattered, leaving cracks behind, but the blade had never touched his body at all.
Shindo froze.
His eyes went wide as he stared ahead in disbelief, then dropped quickly to check his own body.
No blood.
No wound.
Not even his clothes had torn.
"...Huh?"
He raised a hand slowly to his chest, as if he needed to confirm for himself that he was still whole.
Then he looked at Orca, then at the fallen pieces in front of him, before his eyes returned to Zoro, standing calm as though nothing had happened at all.
His eyebrows trembled slightly.
"Wait a second..."
He swallowed hard.
"He... cut the attack?!"
His eyes widened further, as though his mind was only now catching up to what he'd witnessed.
"No... it's not just that..."
He looked at the cracked armor across Orca's chest.
"The blade passed right through here... but he chose not to hurt him?!"
His breathing quickened for a moment.
(What is this terrifying level of control? If he'd actually wanted to...)
He didn't finish the thought.
Near the evacuation zone, Midoriya froze in place without warning.
His green eyes opened to their fullest.
"I... impossible..."
He gripped his own arm without noticing, his gaze locked on Zoro's back.
That stance.
That instant burst of speed.
Even the way he'd sheathed the sword.
An old memory surfaced in a single breath.
"It's the same technique!"
His voice came out louder than he'd intended.
"Shishi Sonson!"
His thoughts raced forward.
"I've seen it before. Against Stain!"
His pupils shook as he studied the cracks across Orca's armor.
"No... this wasn't just a powerful hit..."
He swallowed, still running the analysis with tense eyes.
"He stopped the attack, broke only the armor, and avoided Orca's body completely, all in the same instant..."
A brief pause.
"...his control over that sword is terrifying."
In the stands, Miss Joke stood watching her student face down that brutal attack from Orca, gripping the railing in front of her without realizing it.
Her voice rose on its own as she pointed toward the arena.
"That happened in the blink of an eye!"
Her eyes opened wider.
"That's unbelievable!"
She spun toward Aizawa beside her.
"Did you see that?! Don't tell me you actually caught all of it!"
Aizawa remained seated exactly as he was, chin resting on one hand.
"...Hm."
He answered calmly, without pulling his eyes from the arena.
"I saw enough."
Miss Joke turned to him, stunned.
"What does enough even mean?!"
But Aizawa didn't answer.
On the surface, his face stayed as still as ever, no visible shift at all, but his eyes were locked on Zoro below.
(What are you hiding, Zoro?)
A quiet moment passed.
(This strength. And this control.)
His eyes narrowed slightly.
(What's the secret behind what you can do?)
The noise of shock and scattered conversation faded to the back, as if the arena itself had refocused entirely on the center of the event. Orca stood motionless for a moment, studying the cracks on his own armor with a wary look.
He raised his gaze slowly toward Zoro.
"Clever."
"You used the moment I was distracted, holding someone else with both arms."
"You chose not to cut me."
A short pause.
"That wasn't a miscalculated strike."
His gaze sharpened slightly.
"That was complete control."
Zoro smiled his dark smile, eyes gleaming with raw challenge.
"A real swordsman is one who knows when to cut, and when not to. Whale."
Orca answered with a savage grin of his own. "Since Kamino, I understood you weren't an ordinary student. Your endurance was exceptional. You don't give up easily, so... I'll bring more force to this."
"I want that too!" Zoro replied, his voice full of eagerness.
Behind them, Midoriya and Shindo had already fallen into formation.
"Midoriya!" Shindo shouted, blocking a strike from one of Orca's men. "Protect the victims and watch the surroundings! Don't let anyone get near the back line!"
"Got it!" Midoriya answered, his eyes flicking between the victims and Zoro's fight, trying to read the enemy's movement so he could offer tactical support the instant it was needed.
Orca's men tried to intervene, aiming concrete weapons at Zoro to lock down his movement. But Zoro, thanks to Observation Haki, slipped past every shot with fluid, precise motion, never once shifting his eyes off Orca, his body moving as though it already knew what would happen next.
"Good hit. But what about this?" Orca said, opening his jaw to release a concentrated, terrifying supersonic wave directly at Zoro.
Violent ripples began forming around him, and the ground beneath his feet started to tremble.
Then.
BOOM.
A massive supersonic wave launched forward.
It wasn't just a circle of pressure. It was a wall of raw force, splitting the ground violently in front of it and leaving long cracks trailing behind, while the air itself seemed to tear from the strain.
Zoro raised his head slowly.
He clocked its size.
Its speed.
Its pressure.
The distance separating it from him.
Then.
He drew Wado Ichimonji and set it between his teeth.
Drew Sandai Kitetsu with his left hand.
And Yubashiri with his right.
A shining black layer began sliding over all three blades.
He didn't move.
Didn't retreat.
Lowered his stance slightly.
(I'll split it down the middle.)
He fixed the angle of his swords in front of him.
Then.
"Swordsman!"
A massive shadow dropped over the arena with no warning at all.
Zoro raised an eyebrow.
Above, Inasa was spinning inside a whirlwind.
"Don't be an idiot!"
He thrust his hand forward.
"I'll push it back!"
WHOOSH.
A massive gust of wind launched at the wave.
And in that same instant.
The air froze from the opposite direction.
"Ice wall!"
Giant sheets of ice rose from the ground between Zoro and the incoming wave.
Todoroki appeared right behind them.
"I won't let you take that alone!"
For one second.
Zoro's eyes went wide.
"...Oh no."
But it was already too late.
The wind slammed into the ice wall.
Instead of stopping the attack, it drove the ice shards straight into the wave itself.
The entire pressure path went haywire.
Its direction shifted completely.
(Damn it.)
Zoro had only calculated for one angle.
Now, it was pure chaos.
BOOM.
The pressure detonated directly in front of him.
His eyes widened for a moment as his body absorbed part of the blast.
"Gah...!"
He was thrown back several meters, his shoes carving through the ground.
Rocks scattered around him.
Drops of blood fell from the corner of his mouth.
Heavy silence.
"Z-Zoro?!"
Midoriya's expression changed from a distance.
Above, Inasa froze.
Todoroki's eyes bulged.
"Wait..."
Inasa looked directly at him.
"You're the reason!"
Todoroki spun toward him fast.
"What?!"
"If you hadn't put up that ice..."
"Me?! You're the one who pushed everything with your wind!"
"Don't copy my expression like that!"
Inasa's features hardened.
"Now you look exactly like your father!"
Todoroki's words locked up in his throat.
At that moment, Orca smiled a small, satisfied smile.
"That gap between you two..."
He started moving toward Midoriya and Shindo.
"...just cost your ally."
He raised his head slowly.
"And that's a fatal mistake."
Another wave began forming.
Midoriya's eyes went wide.
"Shindo!"
And in a single beat, the sky above them moved.
Inasa charged in with his wind from above, while Todoroki closed in fast from the other side, launching a direct fire attack straight at Orca.
But the moments that followed were enough to turn everything into chaos.
The wind and the fire collided, and instead of heading toward Orca the way it should have, it veered off course and shot toward one of the victims near the evacuation zone.
"Look out!"
Midoriya screamed at the top of his lungs.
At the very last second, he threw himself forward with everything he had, dragging the victim clear of the flame's path just before it could swallow them whole.
"What are you two doing?!"
His voice came out sharp, furious, thick with panic and disbelief all at once.
At that exact moment, Zoro finally moved.
He tightened his grip on both swords, but his body shuddered slightly. That earlier wave had genuinely hit him. Not enough to drop him, but enough for a terrible weight to settle into his muscles. Real pain sat in his shoulder and side, and a thin line of blood ran from the corner of his mouth. And still, he stayed on his feet. He didn't lose consciousness. He didn't kneel. His body simply locked up for one second, as if it refused to be beaten even by pain itself.
That one moment alone was enough to shake Orca.
"What is this...?"
The professional hero's eyes froze as he looked at Zoro with an entirely different kind of focus.
(He took that wave head on... and he's still conscious?)
(He's still standing?!)
That look said everything it needed to.
Meanwhile, the tension between Todoroki and Inasa kept climbing.
"I told you not to interfere like that!"
"And you fired without even checking the direction!"
"Stop making excuses!"
"You're the one who pushed it toward them!"
In the middle of all that noise, Zoro stepped forward, wiping the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand.
His eyes narrowed with clear anger, not from the pain, but from the mess they'd created.
He pointed Sandai Kitetsu at them.
"You, annoying one."
Then shifted the tip of his blade toward Todoroki.
"And you. Half and half."
A short pause.
"If you two have time to argue..."
His gaze sharpened further.
"...go do it after we're done saving people."
He spat a little blood aside, then continued in a voice that was cold and heavy.
"On a battlefield..."
Todoroki and Inasa both went still.
"...the stupid one isn't the one who makes a mistake."
Zoro raised his eyes toward them, still carrying that same sharp gleam despite the pain.
"It's the one who makes the same mistake twice."
A long silence.
For several seconds, nobody spoke. Inasa stood frozen, his eyes widening slightly. Whatever he'd been about to say simply vanished.
Todoroki stayed quiet too. He moved his eyes slowly toward Midoriya in the back, then toward the victim who had nearly burned, and finally toward Zoro.
He looked at the blood on the corner of Zoro's mouth and lowered his gaze.
"I..."
He clenched his hand.
"Made a mistake."
Inasa dropped his gaze downward, then scratched the back of his head hard.
"Ugh..."
Confusion crossed his face.
"Damn it..."
He bit down on his teeth.
"I was just angry..."
He lowered his head a little.
"...and I messed up too."
In the back, Midoriya blinked several times in a row.
(They actually apologized?!)
Even Shindo raised his eyebrows in surprise.
As for Zoro, he just turned his face away.
"...Tch."
Like none of it had mattered to him at all.
But before anyone could say another word.
BOOM.
The arena shook again, and everyone's heads snapped up.
Orca watched them in silence, then his eyes narrowed slightly.
"...Are you done?"
Sound waves started gathering around him again, the pressure in the air climbing. But this time, no one moved without thinking first.
Todoroki looked toward Inasa.
"...I won't attack head on."
Inasa looked back at him.
"And I won't push anything without coordination."
A short pause.
Then both of them turned toward Zoro. Inasa raised a thumb, smiling with visible nerves.
"So, swordsman! What's the plan?!"
Todoroki simply asked directly.
"What do you need?"
Silence.
Then the corner of Zoro's mouth lifted slightly. He gripped his swords and dropped his stance a little lower.
"Heh."
His gaze intensified.
"...now you two are finally talking sense."
"You, half and half..."
Then toward Inasa.
"And you, annoying one..."
His smile deepened.
"Just clear the path for me."
"I'll draw his attention from the front and pull him away from the evacuation zone, while you two close in from the other sides."
"Move."
On the other side, Orca's expression shifted.
"The allies are uniting now."
His eyes narrowed.
The three students in front of him had turned from three separate fighters into a single team.
Pillars of ice suddenly rose from both his sides, not to injure him, but to lock down his movement.
In the same instant, wind swept through the arena from another angle, lifting dust and rubble into a massive spiral.
"What"
Before he could finish the word.
Zoro appeared directly in front of him, swords raised but not striking. He simply stood there.
Orca understood immediately.
"He's forcing me to focus on him..."
"A distraction? No..."
Above, Inasa suddenly threw both hands up.
WHOOOOSH.
A massive gust tore through the arena, lifting dozens of enormous stone chunks and shattered debris from the ground and the collapsed buildings around them, spinning them into the sky in a giant vortex.
Inasa grinned, pointing his hand forward.
"I'm not letting you near them!"
BOOM.
The rocks launched at Orca all at once.
His eyes narrowed slightly.
"...a direct assault?"
Zoro watched it with a faint smile. "You're completely insane, annoying one. Haha."
"Good idea. I'll use it."
Below, Todoroki moved without hesitation.
"Ice!"
Dense blocks of ice burst from the ground, not to hit Orca directly, but to seal off his angles and cut off any quick retreat. Ice rose along both his sides, spreading across the ground until the space around him shrank far smaller than it had been moments before.
Orca's gaze sharpened with suspicion.
"...a trap?"
Before he could finish the thought, Zoro took exactly one step forward.
Sandai Kitetsu in his left hand, Yubashiri in his right. He coated both blades in a heavy black layer of Haki, then lowered his body, as though his entire being had entered the silence that comes right before a cut.
He didn't lunge forward.
He didn't need to.
He simply raised his arms in one calculated motion, then released a series of long range cuts, narrow angled and terrifyingly precise.
"Tsshhk!"
The air split open in front of him.
Nearly invisible cutting lines shot out from his blades, but they all carried one meaning: total division.
The massive rocks didn't fall as whole pieces.
They detonated in midair into countless fragments, heavy and small, scattering like a hard metal rainstorm, or as if the sky had opened up and rained broken meteors.
Orca's eyes went wide as he threw both arms up.
"...What?!"
The first wave of shrapnel struck his shoulder, the second cleared past his head, another followed from the right. The direct hit wasn't the issue. It was the sheer density of what was falling, dozens of pieces from every angle, giving him no room to read a clear path or find the right instant to dodge.
He tried to escape it with a quick sound wave.
But Todoroki moved at the exact same second.
A wall of ice rose in front of his retreat line, and another shard exploded from the ground at his feet, forcing him to shift his body's angle in a single second. The wall wasn't enough to stop him outright, but it was enough to throw him off.
"Damn it...!"
Orca tried to circle, to find some small gap to slip through, but every step he took brought more falling stone from above and tightening ice from below, with Zoro's shadow fixed at the center like the axis of the whole trap.
He searched with his eyes for any opening ahead, trying to pull back before everything came down on him at once.
But that was exactly what Zoro had wanted.
When Orca leaned his body to one side, his feet slipped on the cracked ice beneath the pressure of the siege, and he lost his balance for the smallest fraction of a second.
One second. No more than that.
But it was enough.
The final wave of cut stone poured down on him, not to crush him, but to force him low, to push him back. Heavy fragments landed around his shoulders and arms, sending a violent shudder through him that bent him under the weight, until he dropped to one knee in the settling dust.
A brief silence.
Orca raised his head slowly, dust falling from his shoulders, refusing to accept what had just happened.
As for Zoro, he stayed standing exactly where he was, both swords still in hand, the black coating still gleaming across the blades.
His eyes still burned with the will to keep fighting. Orca raised a hand, readying one last counterattack.
While all of this played out, more students had reached the evacuation zone and were now helping Midoriya and Shindo protect and rescue the victims gathered there.
And at that exact moment, a shadow dropped from the sky, accompanied by a series of thunderous blasts.
"Die!" Bakugo shouted as he landed in the arena, while Kirishima and Kaminari stood near the evacuation zone, having just finished getting their own victims to safety. Bakugo wore a savage grin, ready to throw himself into the fight.
But.
"BEEEEEEP!"
The whistle tore across the entire arena, followed immediately by Mera's voice over the speakers.
"Rescue of all victims in every zone is complete. As a result, the Provisional Hero License Exam has officially ended!"
Everyone froze where they stood. Bakugo hung in midair for a second before landing, his face twisting with pure rage.
Zoro slid both swords slowly back into their sheaths.
Click.
"Screw all of you!"
Bakugo shouted with hysterical fury, glaring at Zoro and Orca. "That idiot samurai got here before me and hogged all the fun! Why does it end now?!"
Zoro ignored him completely, wiping the sweat from his brow. Gang Orca caught his breath and looked at the students in front of him with a faint, satisfied smile.
"Now..." Mera's voice returned through the speakers, carrying new weight behind it.
"We'll be announcing the exam results shortly."
.
.
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