Hundreds of students were restlessly waiting for the practical test instructions, among them was Ayaka, who was nearly passing out from anxiety.
"I think I'm going to throw up…" she groaned, trying to calm herself and prevent vomiting on someone.
In front of the massive crowd, a large open space was visible, with a wide lectern in the center where a man with yellow hard and ridiculous glasses stood. That man was the voice hero, President Mic, and he was going to give the instructions for the practical exam.
He spoke in a loud tone, "Welcome to today's live performance!!" President Mic looked at the dead-silent crowd and tried to gauge their excitement. "Everybody say "Hey"!!"
'Tough crowd…' he thought before he continued speaking. "Well, that's cool, my examinee listeners! I'm here to present to you the guidelines for your practical test, are you ready!?" Once again, there was dead silence, except for Ayaka, who yelled "Yeah!" at the back.
"That's what I like to hear! So, this is how the test will go. You'll experience 10-minute-long "mock cityscape maneuvers", you can bring along whatever you want with you to your assigned test locations. Each site will be filled with three faux villains, and points will be awarded for defeating them according to their difficulty levels. Of course, attacking your fellow examinees is prohibited and will result in disqualification. Any questions?"
A young man with a nerdy haircut and glasses raised his hand, an indignant look was stamped on his face, "If I may, there appear to be no fewer than four varieties of faux villains, whereas you said there were three. Such blatant error is highly unbecoming for one of Japan's top hero schools!" He paused and snapped back at a young boy with green hair, "And you, with the curly hair! You've been muttering to yourself the entire time, distracting everyone, if you think this isn't worth your attention you might as well leave!"
This uptight nerd raised a good question, President Mic said there were three types of villains, but in the paper he gave us there are four, Ayaka found it strange that such an institution would make a mistake like this. She also looked over to the person that the man scolded, and to her surprise, it was the quirkless boy she met almost two years ago, Izuku Midoriya.
'What is he doing here? I can't imagine how a quirkless person can pass this test.'
President Mic pointed his finger at the examinee and praised him for his attention to detail, before explaining the alleged mistake. "The fourth faux villain isn't worth any points, it is kind of like a Thwomp in Mario Brothers. A gimmick that's only there to be a stage hazard of sorts. That's all from me, I'll leave you with our school's motto, Plus Ultra!! Break a leg, everyone!"
With that, instructors led groups of students to their designated test areas. The test site was an immense and well-crafted replica of a town, where hundreds of green robots walked on the streets, waiting to be subdued by dozens of aspiring heroes.
Ayaka was standing among the other examinees, all of them wearing different clothes or some equipment to help with their quirk usage. Due to the nature of her quirk, Ayaka couldn't think of any specified equipment or outfit that would help her, only something that wouldn't restrain her movements, eventually deciding on just exercise pants and a top, which she usually wore at the gym. This combination made her very comfortable and allowed for easy maneuvering.
She looked around and didn't find many familiar faces, Izuku Midoryia and the glasses guy were among them. Ayaka felt pity for the kid, there's no way someone like him could pass this test.
"Aaaand begin!!!"
The second this voice sounded, everyone ran forward, the glasses guy and Ayaka being ahead of everyone. She took a turn to a less occupied area that was littered with faux villains and began her rampage.
For the last two years, Ayaka trained her quirk incessantly, significantly increasing her powers in every way. She could control larger amounts of plants and wood, use the "Sunbeam" without almost dying, but it took nearly thirty seconds to fully charge it, and how to control her quirk when it wasn't attached to her body, which took a lot longer than she'd like to admit, but it worked. Essentially she could do some sort of magic carpet, where she controlled the wood under her feet to keep herself up in the air, it proved hard to keep up and to balance herself, taking over a year to master.
The villains locked in on her position and tried to launch their attacks, but to no avail. Given that they weren't actual villains, there wasn't any problem in "killing" them, so Ayaka didn't pull any punches and immediately impaled ten of them in one second using wooden spears.
Twisted roots came from the cemented streets and crushed the robots, leaving them impaled and suspended from the ground.
'This looks creepy as hell…' she thought while looking at the mechanical massacre of her own making, which would only grow larger.
Roots engulfed the streets like a disease, releasing more of themselves from within, impaling, crushing, and destroying more and more faux villains.
Once again, President Mic's voice was heard through the test sites, "Only six minutes left!!"
"I've probably racked up nearly one hundred points by now, maybe I should get some rest." Ayaka was sitting on atop dozens of entangled and eviscerated metallic corpses, roots and sharp spikes holding their carcasses from the ground. "Yikes, I should've held back a little…"
Inside a dark room, a large group of heroes spectated the test, they were commenting on the examinees among themselves, "There's no better way to bring out the best out of aspiring heroes, a limited time and a wide battlefield test them in many different ways. Their skills in rescuing, intelligence gathering, mobility skills and we can also see the natural born warriors," That last part was followed by many gazes turning to the screens following Bakugo and Ayaka, "I pity the villains that will face against those two…"
"This year's candidates are great, huh?"
"Yes they are," the man who said this pressed a red button on the control desk, "and this will only show us how great they are."
Two metal titans descended on each test site, the stage hazard was here. Pointless to destroy and offering great danger to anyone who came close, the Zero Pointer was meant to show the participants' true colors. Many ran after seeing the menaces, some were paralyzed by fear, Ayaka stared at the one less than 100 meters from her and pondered what to do.
"I've already done all I had to, and that thing looks like it's going to be a lot of trouble to fight…" the robot approached her, clearly intending to crush Ayaka, "Aw, fuck it." A giant foot came down on Ayaka's location, but stepped on nothing. She used roots to push herself out of range, leaving a cluster of plants under the Zero Pointer's foot, and began rapidly growing upwards, entangling its leg and locking its metallic joints.
The villain was having a hard time moving his leg, but her quirk wasn't durable enough to restrain him for long, so Ayaka had to think fast.
Due to the nature of her quirk, the larger the attack the less resistant and fast it would be, quantity over quality, however, that was a two-way street, the smaller the attack the faster and stronger it would be, and with this in mind she tried something.
She created a thin javelin with a broad point, and a wooden sleeve that covered her entire left arm, and secured her footing with roots coming from her feet. She bent her body backwards, she was going to hurl the projectile with all her might, and like a bent spring, Ayaka threw the javelin with unnatural power, utilizing the telepathic control of the wood and her great body strength.
It quickly pierced the giant's head, expanding into countless sharp roots that ravaged the wiring and mechanical systems from the inside, putting the metal titan down.
"That worked better than I expected. Not troublesome at all."
On the other side of the test site, a young girl was in the midst of being crushed by the second Zero Pointer, the once quirkless Izuku Midoryia saw that scene and without a second of hesitation jumped dozens of meters in the air and with a single punch, wrecked its face, defeating it easily.
Unfortunately, he did not know how to fly, going into free fall moments after. While falling, the girl he saved slapped him midair, causing him to float and saving his life. Izuku was sprawled on the floor, arms and legs broken and immense pain coursing through his body.
"Aaaaaand time's out!!! Good job everyone, if anyone has injuries talk to Recovery Girl, she'll be passing through all test sites!"
Many of the students were sitting and lying on the floor exhausted, the test was finally over, and the moment they had been anxiously awaiting for so long was finally over.
"You can all go home now, you'll get your results next month."
With that, everyone left the test sites and went home to rest, the only thing they could do was wait an agonizing month to see if their lifelong dreams would come true.
Later that evening, Ayaka was at home lying on her bed and talking to Momo over the phone, she told her everything about the practical test.
"I wish I could've seen you there, it's been too long since I've seen you use your quirk."
"There is no way that's true, I make you flowers almost every week."
"You haven't given me any in a while, you know. Just because my grandparents are at my house, doesn't mean you can slack off on your girlfriendly duties." She complained in a playful tone.
"Oh, my fair lady, prithee forgive my ignorance, I promise that I shall bathe you in a river of flowers and love." Ayaka pulled the noble lady vocabulary when she wanted to make a joking apology to Momo, "Witherward to my humble abode, and lay with me once again."
Momo giggled at this sophisticated booty call, tempted to respond to it. "It's getting late, and although I'd love to "lay with you", you and I need to sleep. Let's plan something for the next week, my grandparents will go back home soon, so we'll meet way more often."
Momo's grandparents have been bugging Ayaka for a while, she understood that Momo didn't want to upset them or anything. However, Ayaka knows that it is impossible to go through life without upsetting people and still be true to yourself, that's a fundamental truth. Momo was very adamant about not saying anything, ultimately upsetting Ayaka instead of her grandparents.
"Yeah, we should go to sleep. Goodnight Momo, love you."
"Love you too, good night."
Ayaka hung up and sighed, "For fuck's sake, what's so bad about liking women. Why am I getting so upset about this? I need to talk to Momo about this, it's not good to keep this unchecked."
The key to a good relationship was communication, not talking about your issues and things that bother you often leads to fights and problems, and neither of them wanted that.
"I'll talk to her tomorrow." She went to sleep with a heavy heart, not looking forward to having a serious conversation.