Chapter 8.1- High Priest

When things were finally calm, he called over the next person for their throw. Most of the class was fairly predictable in how they approached the throw. Momo made a giant canon just like she had in canon but the difference was that this one was 100% her own design rather than a repurposed pre-industrial age relic. She easily cleared the 10km mark and went as far as 21km. She was the highest and had me at a distant but still respectable second for a while until the gravity girl stepped up. This time, she just used her power on the ball and gave it a good toss upwards.

The ball flew and flew and flew. It flew so far that it went past Momo’s score with no hope of stopping. I watched Aizawa flip the infinity button on to the screen with his own hand before he turned it around to show the class. How sly. Both Momo and I turned to each other with smiles on our faces. Aizawa hadn’t been with us in a bit but it seemed that some things would never change. Like his Nezu-inspired abhorrence for being straightforward.

The test passed along in a fairly routine manner until someone I had been doing my best to ignore stepped on to the plate. Katsuki Bakugou. In this world, he never truly knew Izuku Midoriya. I’d avoided him like a plague from my first day of pre-school. In fact, the only contact we’d ever had was when the teacher had called the both of us to the front of the class in Kindergarten to spit some drivel about how we had quirks with the potential for heroism. Foolishness like that went a long way to explain why Bakugou from canon had had such an enormous chip on his shoulder. Nevertheless, we never got any chance to interact much. The Institute had come for me shortly after I’d turned 10 and I’d never even seen him after that day.

He most likely had forgotten that I ever existed, and the world would provably be all the better for it. He reared backwards, taking a perfect pitcher’s stance. A precise copy of the stance that I’d taken for my own throw. I narrowed my eyes. Okay, not a perfect copy. But close enough. He didn’t get all the micro movements quite right but he had most of them correct. Further assessing his stance I was forced to amend my conclusion. He didn’t get the micro movements wrong. He adapted them for the differences in our body types. He reared back and fired the ball like a missile. The shockwave tossed most of the class to the ground while I put a single hand on Momo to keep her stable as I remained upright myself. What power. I thought to myself. Such an explosion surely had to be in the kiloton range. If it wasn’t, then out was definitely close.

Aizawa’s face remained a careful mask of boredom but I could see it behind his eyes he was wary. He turned to show us the screen; “3.97 Km? What the fuck?” Bakugo helped us read out the score with audible frustration.

“Give me another ball. Let me go again” He said, advancing on Aizawa, but the man just looked unimpressed.

“Return to position before I expel you out of hand for indiscipline” His bored voice delivered the threat with the right amount of apathy. Like he was saying, ‘Do not make me go to any more trouble than I want to or I will be punishing you’. Bakugo heeded the warning for what it was and walked back to his position to the awed stares of our classmates. His body trembling with suppressed rage. Yeah, that was definitely going to end well.

The next test was the 100 metre dash. The rules for this one were simple, ‘Remain within the bounds of the race track, and cross the finish line.’ We ran the race in groups of two. I had the perfect power for an event like this one so there was no need for me to spend extra time thinking. The first group to run the test, Kaminari and Tsuyu, did not do much to impress, but it was still noteworthy how even without much of an inherent advantage, Kaminari’s run time was still shorter than what had been the world record in my old world.

Bakugo and I were called next and he was seething. There was so much rage in him that I almost reached out to ask him to calm down. Surely this could not have been healthy. I engaged ‘Line of Sight Teleportation’ and waited for the machine to blow the horn. Beside me, Bakugo took a stance were his hands were splayed out behind him and he had bent lower to have a lower centre of gravity. The buzzer rang, I blinked, and then stepped through the finish line. Time: 0.81 seconds. Bakugo finished barely a few seconds later with a time of 3.21.

“Fuck” His voice rang out again, but this time he just sullenly went to join the rest of the class. I did likewise and took my usual place by Momo’s side with no hesitation. She was called upon next, along with Tenya Lida. In a shocking display of consideration, Aizawa had allowed Momo to produce her equipment before the buzzer rang, and once it did, she shot across the race track with a jetpack of all things. Lida somehow managed to remain ahead with his quirk, but it was close. Time: 2.87 seconds. Time: 2.93 seconds.

At this point, the rest of the class had ceased being awed by displays of quirk power and instead seemed to be falling into a collective dread around one simple realisation. Those who failed to make it to the top 10 would be forced to say goodbye to their dreams.

A/N; Here ya go