Chapter 2
Izuku
The bus had left us at the entrance of a gigantic city. Skyrises dotted my sight, interspersed with clearings. The whole area had a desolate feel to it. It dawned on me that the HPSC had created this city specifically for the HATs.
Holy shit, just how much money do they spend on this?!
Our ID bands chimed with an alert, and a metallic voice addressed us from speakers positioned all over the city.
“Welcome to the first Hero Assessment Trial. The details of the trial have been sent to your ID bands; however, I shall describe them here in brief.
1000 candidates have been dropped at 20 different entrances of City A. Your objective is to survive for as long as possible, with the maximum time being 24 hours.”
My ID band flickered to show a holographic counter called Points. It was currently at 3600.
“In 30 minutes, the counter will start dropping at the rate of 1 point per second. If your counter reaches zero, you will drop out from this trial.
You can earn points in 3 different ways: Spread throughout the city are objectives that a hero would require to fulfil, ranging from rescue scenarios to search and retrieval, more information on which has been sent to your bands. These objectives will be provided by volunteers spread throughout the city, who will be clearly marked with a green hat. Voluntarily hurting them is grounds for immediate disqualification from all the trials, and is a penal offence. Completing the objectives grants you points commensurate with your effort in assisting your team. Failing an assignment can lead to penalties which drop the entire team’s points depending on their performance. Both of this will be graded by different heroes and HPSC agents using cameras spread throughout the city. Your ID bands double as a microphone, which automatically switch on during assignments, and are switched off otherwise.
You also earn points for taking actions showing heroic qualities like bravery, intelligence, wisdom, common sense, first-aid, critical thinking etc., the details of which have been sent to your respective bands. You lose points for engaging in wilful criminal acts, and other acts of negligence.
The final method to earn points is to knock out members from other teams. Knocking out a member of an opposing team transfers 1/5th of the team’s total points to your team, divided in proportion of your contribution. Deliberately crippling or killing an opposing team member disqualifies you from the HATs and is a criminal offence. Accidental killing or maiming leads to penalties in points commensurate with the violation.”
The cold and calculating manner in which the last two sentences were spoken caused my stomach to churn. I could see the disturbed looks on my team members’ faces, which probably mirrored my own.
The voice went on, uncaringly, “Food and other necessary amenities are provided in designated safe zones marked by blue-coloured buildings. Attacking a team in these zones will lead to automatic dropping out of your entire team from this trial, though you are not barred from participating in the other ones. You cannot stay in a particular safe zone for more than 1 hour, and on leaving a safe zone, you cannot re-enter it for 12 hours. The locations of the safe zones are marked on your bands.
If you have any query, you can send it to us via the message option on your bands. If the answer is within your means to find, you will not get a response. If you have a medical emergency, press the red button located at the bottom of your band. By doing so, you voluntarily disqualify yourself from the HATs altogether.
That is the end of this transmission. To all the candidates, do your best.”
The end of the announcement was followed by the appearance of a large hologram in the sky, which showed the words, “Preparation Time”, followed by “30:00”. The timer started to countdown, and at once people started rushing into the city.
“Guys let’s start by finding an isolated building near a safe zone,” I muttered, which was quickly assented to by my team. Tsugumi gave us a sign to wait, and then seemingly started to focus.
A few seconds later, she opened her eyes, which had now changed from a pale blue to a deep blood red. Her voice seemed much more emboldened than before as she pointed her finger towards the West.
“The nearest safe zone is 500 meters in that direction. There are a lot of buildings near that place and no one in a radius of 2 km is moving in that direction yet.”
2 km! Wow that was an insane radius for a clairvoyant ability. “Nazar, how long can you keep that up?”
“At the current radius of 2 km, I can keep it up for 30 minutes, unless I need to fight.” Seeing our amazed looks, she blushed and stuttered, “A-As the time spent in my quirk increases, I s-start losing sight of details, and it’s n-not like I can see everything, just a bird’s eye view. If I start looking inside buildings, my d-duration decreases by a lot.”
Kaminari looked at her with an awestruck expression, “That’s so cool Nazar! Man, being able to look so far and even inside buildings…I can think of so many possibilities!” The lecherous smile forming on his face quickly turned into a yelp as he found his foot stomped on by Momo, who looked away with a quiet blush.
Ignoring that line of thought, I reassured my far-seeing teammate, “That’s more than enough Nazar. Can you keep this up till we travel near the safe zone and inform us if someone starts moving in our direction? That will be a great help!” Tsugumi nodded demurely, and we started with hasty steps in the direction she had pointed at.
----------------------------------------
Momo
I looked around at the dilapidated buildings we ran past, as we made our way to the safe zone. Suddenly, Izuku stopped and addressed Tsugumi.
“The safe zone is on the next block, right?”
Tsugumi nodded. Izuku turned to us and pointed at a nearby two-storey house. “We should get out of sight and make up a strategy before we get to the safe zone. Once the timer starts, it will probably be…”
“A warzone,” completed Shoji, his first words since being dropped at the entrance of this city. Izuku nodded, and turned to the rest of us for confirmation. I gave my assent, since the plan was sound, while Kaminari patted Izuku on the back excitedly and rushed into the building.
As soon as we were inside, Izuku asked Tsugumi to deactivate her power for now which she gladly acceded to.
Noticing her massaging her eyes, I quietly approached her. “Nazar, are you okay?”
“Y-Yaoyorozu, I-I’m fine. It’s just, my eyes start d-drying up a little after using my power, and the t-trials forbid us from bringing a-any equipment except a pre-approved costume.”
I could sympathize with her, as I had gotten very used to my SmartVision, a pair of high-tech glasses developed for me by our scientists. Eyedrops, hmm, that would be povidone, some glycols and glycerine. Concentrating, I imagined the chemical structures of the individual molecules, before making the molecules interact with each other in my mind to form a superstructure. With that picture in my mind, I focused on the concentration, viscosity and density of the resultant liquid solution. Finally, I focused on the plastics and rubber formulae I had memorized years ago, and moulded them into the shape of a dropper in my mind. With my preparations done, I activated my quirk, and from my hand, emerged a dropper filled with a yellowish viscous solution upto its brim.
“Here, this should be of assistance,” I handed over the dropper to Tsugumi. She inspected it briefly, before using it on her eyes. Immediately, her expression brightened.
Wow, she was cute when she smiled.
“T-Thank you Y-Yaoyorozu. I really appreciate it.”
“It was my pleasure. You can call me by name, I would greatly appreciate less formality.”
“Y-You too then M-Momo. Call me Tsugumi. A-Also, you should be the last p-person to talk about formality.”
“Oh! Apparently, the meek exterior is hiding a sharp tongue after all.”
Both of us glanced at each other before breaking out into quiet giggles.
While I had been making the eye drops, the boys had made a quick circuit of the house and were back. We sat around a convenient dining table as Izuku addressed us.
“While we are here, we might want to set up a scouting system. Perhaps Yaoyorozu can make some basic traps and Nazar can use her quirk in shifts? I think Mezo can also help, but I am not sure about the limitations of your quirk.”
Two of Shoji’s arms extended to the walls like tentacles. I could see ear-like protrusions at their tips. “Don’t worry Midoriya. Ears grown by my quirk have excellent hearing. I can listen for about 50 meters around us without issue and keep it up indefinitely.”
Izuku sighed in relief. “That is great. We have an excellent early warning system with our members. We can have Nazar use her ability to scout out the volunteers giving tasks instead, and try to get 432,000 points for our team as quickly as possible. Then we can find a defensible position and wait out the 24 hours.”
Kaminari leaned back on his chair and sighed. “That sounds so boring! But I guess that’s the way to pass this without issue. Though, why do we need 432,000 points exactly?”
“That is because we lose 1 point every second Denki,” I pointed out. “We would need 3600 points for an hour, and 86,400 points for a day per person. Though, wouldn’t we need 86,400 points individually for that?”
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Izuku smiled. “I was reading through the detailed rules on our ID band. There is no rule prohibiting us from sharing points with each other. I sent them a message asking how to go about doing that, and apparently, it’s very simple.” He tapped the ID band twice and then spoke directly into it, “Transfer 1 point to Yaoyorozu Momo.”
I looked at my band and saw my points were now sitting at 3,601.
“That’s amazing leader!” Kaminari exclaimed. “This means we just gotta get enough points together. We got this!”
Izuku sputtered at Kaminari. “L-leader? I-I just checked the r-rules.”
“Midoriya, it does seem that you are suited for the position of team leader for this trial,” I smiled at him. “We can have a show of hands for those who agree.”
Everyone except Izuku raised their hand. He blushed and muttered, “Thanks for the vote of confidence guys. No pressure Izuku, just one of the most important tests in the country.”
----------------------------------------
Izuku
“Relax Midoriya. It does look like you have an eye for strategy,” Shoji reassured me. I gave him a grateful smile, and with renewed confidence asked the team, “So, I know we weren’t allowed to bring any weapons, but we do have Yaoyorozu here. Is anyone here missing any equipment that they would like? Yaoyorozu, do you think you would be able to make such equipment for us?”
Momo nodded. “My reserves are full. I can create working prototypes of most weapons from everyday metals and polymers. Would that be sufficient?”
“Yes, that should be fine, we shouldn’t need anything too complex anyway. Which weapons did you guys prefer in your classes in High School?”
“I don’t really have any preference bro. I honestly just did the bare minimum for the Weapons Training Course. My speciality was long range and I learned enough hand-to-hand to incorporate shocks in my punches properly ya know,” Kaminari accentuated his statement with a sparking fist.
Shoji shrugged. “I like using Escrima Sticks. I could often surprise people because of the extra reach and the different angles I can attack people from.”
Momo concentrated for a bit, and then two metal sticks popped out from her shoulder, ripping through her costume. Two more followed. In the blink of an eye, the costume repaired itself, and she was back to her pristine self.
Looking at our expression, she explained, “Our company’s scientists manufactured this for me by using my genetic material. I can focus on the material and regenerate it with minimal usage of my reserves.”
Kaminari gawked at that. “Your company?”
“Oh, apologies for the insufficient explanation. My father owns the YM conglomerate.”
Yeah, that confirmed my earlier suspicion. I could understand the flabbergasted expressions on the others’ faces. The YM conglomerate was the largest conglomerate in the entire world, consisting of more than 200 companies. They manufactured products in every single sector and were more or less a household name. All this in a mere 18 years!
I couldn’t fault Kaminari for forgetting that the founder of YM was Yaoyorozu Shira, since he rarely made public appearances anymore. Still, it was not surprising that the YM heiress had access to such a costume; the only scientific team which published more research in the field of quirk science compared to YM was in I-Island led by David Shield.
I cleared my throat to divert attention away from Momo, who was starting to look a bit uncomfortable, and asked Tsugumi, “Nazar, what about you?”
“I-I have g-good aim due to m-my quirk’s second maturity. I p-prefer to use g-guns, but I think t-that might be difficult, especially in the t-trial.”
Wow, that was a surprise. It wasn’t just that the somewhat skittish Tsugumi was a gunslinger, but the fact that she used guns in the first place. Since the First Quirk Wars and the observation that quirks matured in certain phases, it was found that those whose bodies underwent the second maturity phase were in general tougher, stronger and faster than other humans. Not everyone reached their second maturity; those who didn’t were labelled as having “civilian quirks” and comprised more than 50% of the current population, though this percentage had been steadily declining over the years. This was also the main reason for the separation of sports into the Civilian and Augmented categories for the sake of preserving competitiveness.
Against most Augmented individuals, normal ammunition would at most leave behind a nasty bruise. As such, demand for high calibre ammunition had increased significantly, especially by the military and law enforcement, and guns had gradually faded away from everyday life with the yakuza and the common criminal discovering the futility of using them and moving to quirked muscle instead. A couple of heroes still used them, though that was mostly because their quirks directly augmented that style.
Coming out of my musing, I noticed that Momo had created a small handgun and a couple of rounds of ammunition. “You’re right Tsugumi, I am not certain of the legality of using high calibre bullets here, and in any case, it’s been a while since I last visualized them so I wouldn’t be sure of their functionality. These are just 9mm rounds, but I can create them on the fly. Perhaps they can serve as a distraction?”
Tsugumi inspected the gun, almost caressing it. Then she took a quick pose with it, and her demeanour was completely different than before. Her posture had straightened, and she spoke confidently, “Don’t worry Momo, this is more than enough. After all, these can still hurt if I shoot them correctly.”
Okay…note to self, Tsugumi plus a gun equals scary.
“What about you Midoriya? Do ya use anything?” Kaminari asked me.
“Hm, Yaoyorozu, can you create marbles or discs of some dense material? Anything is fine, it just needs to be heavy.”
Momo pondered that for a bit, and then opened her palms. Tennis ball shaped metallic objects started popping out of them. “I can see how this will be useful for you. These are made of Chrome Steel, which is durable, hard and dense.”
I picked one of them up and tested its weight. “Thank you, Yaoyorozu, these are perfect.”
“No thanks are required. As we are a team, let us do away with the formalities. Please call me Momo.”
“Ah Momo, no complaints from me and all, but shouldn’t ya be the last one to talk about formality?” Kaminari asked. Tsugumi suddenly broke out in giggles, and waved her hands at our puzzled looks.
Momo also had a bemused smile. “Anyway, we only have ten minutes before the commencement of the trial. What do you think we should do Izuku?”
I mentally went over the details in the band. “We have a great advantage in terms of recon. As soon as the timer starts, let’s look for the nearest volunteers and do their tasks. Tsugumi, unless we need you specifically for the assignment, maybe you should keep an eye out for hostile teams. I think some combat focused teams might hide near volunteers, as I have a feeling that taking out a team is probably the most lucrative way to get points.”
“Besides that, I have some ideas and strategies from the description of your quirks.”
A small discussion later, I felt we were as ready as we could be.
Just in time as well, since a klaxon sounded throughout the city. Our ID bands projected our points as a hologram, and they started ticking down.
The first trial had begun in earnest.
----------------------------------------
Izuku
We quickly moved two blocks away from our temporary hideout, giving the safe zone a wide berth for now, with Tsugumi leading us to the first volunteer she had spotted. A diminutive old lady was standing next to a tall tree, looking for all the world like a distressed grandma. As soon as she spotted us, she began speaking, “Oh heroes, my cat Ginger is stuck on the tree and refusing to come down. Could you please help me?!”
To say that we all had a collective sweatdrop would be an understatement. While I knew that heroes commonly helped out with such chores throughout the city, I didn’t expect our very first task to be so mundane. However, all such thoughts disappeared from my mind as the lady started to sob quietly. Instantly, Momo and I started consoling her.
Kaminari confidently walked up to the tree.
“Don’t worry guys. I am good with cats and climbing. I’ll be back in a jiffy.”
“I can hear some meows from the top branches,” Shoji told him.
“She’s on the highest branch to your l-left,” Tsugumi affirmed.
Kaminari quickly climbed up the tree. After the noises of a brief scuffle, and a yelp, he climbed back down, carefully holding Giner, a calico with green and blue eyes, and returned her to the lady.
Instantly, her countenance changed. Her tears dried up and she held the cat calmly. “Good job candidates. You could have done this a bit quicker, but overall, I am satisfied. Quest Success.”
As if reacting to her words, our bands beeped, and our points rose. We had received 11,000 points in total, with Kaminari receiving 3,000 and the rest of us receiving 2,000. The lady placed Ginger on the ground, who quickly bound up the tree again. Looking at our bewildered faces, she said, “Go on, you can only do this quest once. I must prepare myself for the next set of candidates.”
Still a bit shaken at the abrupt professionalism, we left the site and started moving towards the next volunteer that Tsugumi had spotted.
“What happened to your hands Kaminari?” I heard Shoji ask ahead of me.
“Uh…let’s just say that this cat was a feisty one,” Kaminari chuckled and started whistling a jaunty tune. “Also, did you notice that the volunteer said quest? What is this, an RPG? Wait this is totally an RPG, we are the protagonists, and this is our first story arc on the path to greatness.”
As Kaminari rambled, we quickly reached the second volunteer, who was a young child looking lost. Seeing us approach, he started crying loudly and shouting for his mom. Using Tsugumi’s clairvoyance, we were easily able to locate his mom and netted ourselves another 12,000 points, the bulk of which went to Tsugumi.
Over the next hour, we only found two more quests as we were actively avoiding other teams by relying on Tsugumi and taking a break when she needed to rest. We helped find a lost earring and collected some litter and were now sitting at a comfortable 10,000 points each after dividing them up equally.
“Tsugumi, perhaps you should take it easy for a bit. I can take care of the scouting for some time,” said Shoji, extending one of his arms covered with ears to the ground.
Tsugumi nodded gratefully. “I-I have memorized the locations of the next two volunteers.” She pointed towards the center of the city. “They are in that direction.”
We set out cautiously and soon came upon a clearing where a middle-aged man was standing casually next to a lamppost. As we started approaching him, the lamppost started creaking, and with a loud crack split into two.
Time seemed to slow down as I saw that it was headed straight for the man. I calculated the movement trajectory I needed quickly and focused my quirk on my shoes. I felt the familiar energy coursing through my body and saw the emerald spark touching my shoes. I couldn’t affect my own body, not yet at least, however, shoes were fair game. I created two of my strongest upward force vectors on my shoes and tried to stabilize my arms as best I could.
I got launched at the volunteer in a clumsy but extremely quick and effective tackle and we both narrowly avoided the deafening crash as the lamppost hit the ground. I bit back a wince; using my quirk like this always hurt. By this time, my teammates had caught up, and I could see Momo had already created some band-aids. I turned to the volunteer anxiously, fearing the worst.
He was completely unscathed. He picked himself up from the ground and gave a belly-aching laugh. “Kid, that had to be one of the poorest tackles I have seen in my life. You looked like a floundering fish. You really need to work on keeping the victims as safe as possible in these scenarios. Still, some bruises are much better than a fatal accident, and you did get the job done. Quest Success.”
I could barely acknowledge the ding signifying the transfer of points to us. Momo helped me up to a sitting position and quietly applied the band-aid to my right hand, which had acquired a small scrape.
“B-But, if I didn’t move you out of the way, you would have been seriously injured! What if I hadn’t been fast enough?”
He smiled at me kindly. “You’re a nice kid. Thank you for worrying. As part of our contract with HPSC, we agree to take certain risks if required for evaluation. In any case, I was in no danger from this particular quest. While candidates do get injured every year, volunteers rarely do.” He flexed his body, and I suddenly noticed how muscular he was. “I am not the strongest, but my quirk makes my body very durable. A lamppost or two is nothing.”
I mutely nodded and we started walking away from the scene.
However, it looked like our problems had just begun. Shoji stopped me and with a mouth-tentacle close to my ear, whispered, “I hear 5 people approaching from ahead. They’re moving very quickly.”
Sure enough, moments later another team sprinted into the clearing. The apparent leader, a tall, muscular guy wearing a bandana, cheered as he saw us and patted the back of a diminutive boy next to him.
“You were right Ho, there really was a group nearby.” Turning to us, he smiled. “Now, look here, we don’t have to fight. My guy Neru can put a couple of you to sleep and we get 40% of your points. You don’t get eliminated and we walk away, a win-win situation, right?”
“Of course, you can choose to fight as well.” His smile turned sinister as he slowly unwrapped his bandana, revealing a mane of blond hair extending past his shoulders. Slowly, the hair started stiffening and, in a moment, turned spiky and grew to thrice its length. “We would have to give it our all at that point.”
“Trust me, you don’t want that.”
I looked at my teammates quickly. No words were exchanged, but from the looks on their faces, especially Kaminari’s, I knew we were on the same page.
Looks like it was time for our first combat.