Chapter 10- High Priest (R18) Complete

The next test ended up being the Standing deadlift. I could already tell how this was going to got go at this point now the we had reached the halfway point. We had no idea what tests remained but it was clear the several of the average performers were on their last legs. Even people like Bakugo who had been phenomenal all the way through were still beginning to feel the exhaustion creeping in on them. The swim had contributed a lot to it. Especially since Aizawa hadn’t given anyone any chance to get time to read after the swim. Each person that finished was quickly hurried off to the showers and expected to change and return to him in 5 minutes.

I’d ended up sitting in my tracksuit by the pool and waiting for close to twenty minutes for the tenth person, Hagakure herself incidentally, to finally crest the final length and then Aizawa blew on some whistle to basically tell everyone still in the pool to get out and get moving. We did. Eventually.

And now we were in an indoor gymnasium with barbells in front of us. The goal? Complete the highest deadlift. The weight of the bars could be adjusted using some form of analogue rotation mechanism near the mid point of the handles. I watched as a few people began setting theirs and lifting. The bars had on board computers, gyroscopes, and accelerometers to be able to measure when they get lifted and how high- along with the form used to lift them. You could set the bars to whatever weight you wanted but only successful lifts would get recorded on Aizawa’s computer as part of the leaderboard. Anything else would not get such treatment.

I knelt down by mine after watching Kirishima complete his first lift with a wide smile on his face. I began to fiddle with the dial, moving it up, and up, and then up some more until I had hit the maximum. 10,000 kilograms. With a simple thought, I stacked three different strength enhancements on top of each other and lifted the bar with little stress. Satisfied, I took a step back for a proper lift. I spread my legs in front of the bar and then bent at the waist to place one hand on each grip before lifting it up to waist level with little strain and then spread my legs even further and bent my knees to transition to having the bar held high above my head. I smiled as I leaned back down and carefully set down the bars where I’d picked them up. Aizawa gave me a nod, but no smile as he looked at the reading. Looking to the side, I could see what the others were attempting. Momo had taken to crafter herself an entire exosuit that she would use in this challenge. It was both a display of skill, and a massive gamble.

Her quirk didn’t just let her create things ad infinitum. She had limits, and this was going to be a major step in the journey to hitting those limits. She’d probably used more than two-thirds of her lipid stores already, and without a reliable way to replenish them she was really gambling that the next few tests would be helped by the exo suit. There was also the fact that she had performed well enough in all the other tests that she was practically guaranteed a top in the spot 10 already.

She completed the suit, and I silently marvelled as she wasted no time in setting the bar to its highest weight and then stepped into the suit. It was a bulky thing. That was the first sign of Momo’s tiredness. For her quirk, complexity was the bottleneck and not size. It was actually easier to make a bulky suit like this one than it would have been to make a thinner, slicker model since that would have a lot more moving parts within it that she would have had to independently fabricate and integrate with her quirk.

It was a powerful quirk, regardless of its faults, but anyone with half a brain would know that only Momo’s unique intellect made it so dangerous. In the hands of anyone else, it would be a gun. In Momo’s, it was a nuke. She stepped forward, making the ground rumble with each step and then bent down to the barbell. In seconds, she had it lifted above her head. She returned it to the floor, if a bit less delicately than I had, and stepped back. Aizawa watched the whole thing without saying a word. And after verifying that everyone else had completed theirs, he announced that we were moving to the next test- the grip test.

I practically saw Momo sigh in relief within her suit’s grip as she realised that the next task would not require anything new. I kept my power choices the same and picked up the pressure sensitive handle of the grip tester and squeezed. In a matter of seconds, the attached screen began to let out a whistle.

“Let go of it, Midoriya. You’ve reached the limit” Aizawa said, and I wasted no time in dropping the device down as I noticed that it had begun to smoke in my grip. Unlike me, Momo did not have the control to gradually hit the limit. She squeezed and the machine broke down around her. Aizawa facepalmed while she seemed embarrassed at our classmates’ stairs.

“The Institute will be more than happy to pay for the damages if you could just send them a bill,” I said, stepping to her side and giving her a sympathetic path on her back.

“As if UA would need to do something so petty” The man with the erasure quirk simply scoffed in reply before announcing that everyone had to get back to their tasks and that we’d move to the next thing sooner.

“Sorry. I think I made a mistake in calibrating the actuators” She said, trying to show me the part she was talking about but I just smiled at her.

“It doesn’t matter. You’re killing it. Just remain focused for the next bit” I told her and she nodded.

“The next event is the Balance Test” Aizawa said, walking further into UA’s outdoor gymnasium and taking us into what had to be the gymnastics session. I could see the balance beam but Aizawa was instead pointing at a tightrope suspended several dozen feet above the whole thing.

“The goal is simple. Make it from one end to the other. You must be touching the rope at the way” He said. “Now who wants to go first?” He asked.

“I will” I said, stepping forwards only noticing at the very last second that I hadn’t been the only one to volunteer myself for the task. Mina had also stepped forwards at the same time. Aizawa looked at the both of us, and simply turned to his side and called Bakugo to go first. It was almost like he was scoffing at us for being so quick to volunteer. Bakugo, of course, did not hesitate to grab the challenge laid before him with both hands. He climbed up to the top platform in virtually no time. I watched as he placed his feet on the tight rope with very little hesitation. The next step he took took him some amount of the way to the end, and then the boy took a deep breath before allowing himself to fall over for a second and then grabbing on to the rope with both arms.

Sure that his arms were secured enough, he began to slowly shimmy down the line, taking step after step until he had crossed the final point. At the end of the day, it had taken him about 3 minutes and 45 seconds to finish the test. Hagakure went next almost immediately with Aizawa insisting that she had her arm up even if she claimed to not have had it up. Of course he said she did. She said she didn’t. He threatened to score her zero if she didn’t get moving, and so she did. Of corse, Aizawa was a sharp man so he did make her confirm my voice that she was at one end of the podium and not the other, just in case the floating clothes that marked her position were not enough. A wise choice, considering I could have decided to helped her fool the task for the sake of what we had shared earlier but since I had not been asked, I got to watch along with everyone else as she tip toed across the right rope. Surprisingly enough, she even managed to beat Bakugo’s time.

Momo was the only other notable contender, snatching the best score from Hagakure right before Mina went on. It seemed like the pink girl was made for the test as she practjucalkly glided along the line. She did not slow down her momentum at all, walking across the tight rope at a brisk pace and taking the first position on the leaderboard for this task. Ending up going last, I stared down at the rope even as I knew this was going to be a walk in the park. ‘Cat like grace, supercomputer, and enhanced speed’ were my chosen choices for this particulqeer test, and they proved to be the right one. Aizawa blew the whistle, and like a bullet from a gun, I was off.

I ran across the tight rope like I was running along the floor. For all intents and purposes, I basically was. I ended up finishing the test in 4 seconds, to the stunned awe of much of the classroom. Of course, I wasn’t stupid enough to believe awe was the only emotion being displayed there. The bottom half of the classroom was going to be dropped from the course. That was the threat. It meant that when I succeeded, I got quite a few looks as people began to understand their places in the pecking order. Thankfully, human nature meant that the dirty looks weren’t sent at me most of the time. People were more keen to compete with those with scores closer to theirs.

Those in the middle knew each other, and they watched each other’s every move with alert eyes. It was almost like a social experiment in real time. Those outside the top 10 were not wasting their time with those in the top half. Instead, they saved their dirty looks for those just a bit above them. Those doing just a bit better than them. Would have been funny if it wasn’t so sad.

Aizawa wasted no time announcing the penultimate task. It was a test of reflexes. He took us all to a second on the wall that was filled with buttons of all sorts of colours, and then he began to explain. “This machine, like I said tests your reflexes. Reflexesm, coordination, and concentration, to be precise. The colours are designed to light up at random, but must only be pressed in a particular order. Each button only remains lit up for about five seconds at first. In that time, you should be able to complete a circuit in the right order and then get to the button’s turn. The machine is programmed to make sure it was always technically possible to do that. As time goes on, more and more buttons will light up at an even more random order. The periods between each button lighting up and also going dim will reduce as well as time passes. The goal is to last without getting disqualified for as long as possible, or for ten minutes. Whichever comes first. In my experience, the former always comes long before the latter. Once you make three errors, it’s over.” He said with a chuckle and stepped backwards.

Considering there were two terminals, it was clear that this was the sort of task that could be attempted two at a time. Bakugo and Mina went first, and it was almost sad how little time she managed to last. She kept a hold of the patterns for close to a minute but just lot the plot after seventy-two seconds. Kenpachi ended up lasting long enough for Bakugo’s impressive four minutes to run out, and even for Aoyama’s thirty-five seconds as well. He put up the time to beat at four minutes seventeen seconds. It stood for a while, until Todoroki edged it out by a second. When I got to the front of the line, I noticed that Momo was still on the other terminal and her clock had already run into six minutes. I smiled as I chose my roster and begun.

To be honest, a test like this was basically too easy with the arsenal of powers at my disposal. Halfway through my attempt, I heard a ringing sound followed by applause as Momo hit the 10 minute barrier. She left the terminal and was replaced by a quesy looking Uraraka. I continued my attempt, barely struggling as supercomputer kept a track of each button as it lit up while running a mental program to make sure I didn’t make any errors. The lack of a beeping sound throughout my attempt was a sign of the effectiveness of the power when it came to things like that. I stepped off the terminal ten minutes after I’d stepped on and smiled politely at Kirishima cheering on my totally ‘manly’ display.

Since I’d gone last, I finished just in time to hear Aizawa unveil the last test. Darts. Just darts. No other elements. Just a simple game of darts. You get three darts, you aim them at the board. The best scores win. It was deceptively simple. Of course, that also meant that the lack of additional elements meant less things to manipulate. It turned into a test of luck, as much as skill for most people. After all, mos people couldn’t just turn their brains into supercomputers and force their bodies to adapt the form and technique used by professional dart throwers. Even at that, I still ended up with only the second highest score.

Ochaco Uraraka tossed three hundreds. Three perfect shots. With her eyes closed and the form of a drunk baboon. It was so inconceivable, it was automatically funny. One final lighthearted moment until we all left the gymnasium for the same open field we’d all begun at.

It was largely unchanged, except for the sudden appearance of a screen that stood right behind Aizawa. For the display of our scores most likely. All the levity from Ochaco’s throws had been tossed out of the group. Instead, there was a shared apprehension in the air. Half the class was being cut in one fell swoop and even those of us who weren’t being cut found it hard to find any humour in the situation.

A/N; Here.