Chapter 9 - Integrating
The morning of the first day of entrance exams, Aizawa woke up with a runny nose and a stuffy head.
He groaned.
It wasn’t a surprise exactly, because yesterday he had fought a villain that, if they managed to nick you, could make you sick based on your blood type. They had worked with another villain who could control glass. Fighting against levitating pieces of broken glass in the dark, (because of course they would be hiding somewhere, out of the way, don’t want to cut themselves after all), is not conducive to avoiding getting cut. He had hoped that he was safe, because honestly he wasn’t sure what was from glass and what might have been that villain.
But of fucking course, of all the days he could possibly get sick, today would the today.
He allowed himself just one moment to wallow in misery, to acknowledge that he felt overheated and cold at the same time, to contemplate burrowing under the blankets and pressing his head into the pillow and having Zashi tell Nedzu that he was too sick to make it today.
And then he sighed and got up.
(It wasn’t contagious after all, what kind of hero would he be if he let a headache and a runny nose stop him, certainly not much of one.)
A few ibuprofen, two cups of water, and half a box of tissues later he felt slightly better.
Zashi shoved a piece of toast at his face, he grimaced. Zashi narrowed his eyes and Nao stepped into his line of vision with his arms crossed and eyebrows raised.
He took the toast.
They drove to U.A. in silence, which his pounding head certainly appreciated, and by the time they arrived the ibuprofen seemed to have done it’s job as the pounding headache faded and was instead replaced with the wave of exhaustion that Aizawa privately believed was more a reaction of relief that the pain was gone rather than anything the medicine did directly.
He siddled into the control room quietly, at this point no one else was even there, and cocooned himself in his sleeping bag with a box of tissues nearby before settling down in the corner adjacent to the door to wait.
Personally, Yamada loved watching the heroics entrance exam, he had always been a people person, always loved teaching, and there was just something absolutely fantastic about the raw power and creativity that prospective students showed off every year.
Plus, their stupid little faces of surprise when he screamed begin with no other warning would never not be absolutely hysterical. (Yamada loved kids, he loved his jobs, he really did, but even he could admit that sometimes kids were just really fucking annoying.)
He did not love watching kids get injured. He liked watching them nearly fall to their deaths after frightening displays of power even less.
Uraraka Ochako knows that her quirk is useful, and she knows that it can very easily be turned into something dangerous. Maybe not the most dangerous quirk out there, but she knew that most days, it’d be laughably easy for her to accidentally kill someone.
So generally, she does not use her quirk on people without their express permission. (And she figures that when she gets into UA - because there is no other option than when, not if - and when she becomes a hero, this will have to change, but not right now.)
The green haired boy, whose name she still does not know, has already made her break this rule once today.
In a moment it will hopefully be twice.
The 0-Pointer moves, and there is ruble falling and for a moment Aizawa sees the examinees running and thinks ‘good, run, survive,’ and then there is an alert that a student is trapped beneath a chunk of wall.
And he cannot breathe, cannot see anything other than Oboro for a precious second even though he knows, he knows because he saw, that this girl was using her quirk to effortlessly lift robots into the air, she can get out. It’s just her leg pinned and she can get out.
She does not.
Maijima is watching, waiting to redirect the robot to give the student a chance to get out on their own.
He wants to scream, scream at him to shut it down, can’t they see, if she could get out she would have by now, stop it she is going to get hurt and he does not know how badly-
And then there is a crater in the ground, and in the 0-Pointers head.
The girl is safe, but now there is a boy falling to his death.
Aizawa notices only the boy, with limbs so broken he can see it even from the camera drones that have been pushed back (far, too far) by the force, the aftershocks, of that punch, falling to his death.
And for one terrible moment, Aizawa is certain that he is about to see two more children die.
Midoriya has stared death in the face before, or at least, he’s pretty sure he’s stared death in the face before. He’s not actually certain, because it certainly felt like he was about to die, but clearly he’s still alive, so maybe he was never all that close in the first place.
There is no doubt that this time, if he does not do something, he will die.
His legs and his right arm are shattered, and it’s probably the worst pain he’s ever felt but he can't help but feel it’d at least be a closer contest if they weren’t wildly flapping about in the wind, it makes it hard to think.
Maybe… maybe if he times it just right, and he punches with his unbroken arm, maybe the force will cancel out? There’s not exactly time to work out the exact calculations right now, and even if he could it’s not like he can control the force behind it anyways, but he was knocked back when punched the 0-Pointer, weightless and almost floating backwards for the briefest of moments before gravity took control.
So, theoretically, this shouldn’t be impossible.
He, takes a moment, tries to at least slow his hyperventilating, gasping breaths, rears back his arm-
And gets slapped in the face.
Zero Gravity: Lessens the gravity of any object the user touches with all five fingers. Released by touching all fingers of the opposite hand together and wishing for the effect to end.