Exam no Jutsu

P1: The Provisional License Exam is...‽

Hoge is in Hell.

As would be expected of a class representative, she is supposed to be encouraging her peers in 1-D to be good examples of Shiketsu morals and pride. She is supposed to be at the lead of the group so that no one gets lost or wanders off. She is supposed to incorporate this stupid peaked cap that is the focal point of the formal dress uniform of the academy into her costume for this provisional license exam, and she is most certainly not supposed to call the cap stupid out loud where any stupid weirdo from the stupid crowd could hear.

Hoge had to sign out an extra large cap so it would fit over the brown metal helmet that capstones her Marumaru persona. Every few minutes she reaches up to adjust it and make sure it's still on. Since she obviously can't feel it through the metal, the idea that it could blow away or get snatched off at any time has been grating on her nerves. Anyway, is she supposed to be a train conductor, or a cicada-themed ninja? The whole thing clashes. And the navy blazer is getting in the way of her utility belt!

On the way to the National Quirk Analysis building east of Nagoya, Hoge had plenty of time to watch the other kids get slack about their uniforms. Some were like Tanaka-san, who was wearing his normal cap directly over his costume's hood. It gave him a faceless appearance like a mage from an old video game or a mook from an SF movie. Others were like Sagara-chan, who was only technically wearing the uniform in the loosest sense. The blazer was tied around her waist by the sleeves, and the cap was bound to her hip like a shield with the red ribbons she could generate.

Normally, Hoge would care more about trying to correct things like that. Today, all she felt was jealousy. If she wasn't responsible for holding up a certain image, she'd be trying to think of a way to bend the rules like that, too. And had the Korean clique had their uniform pieces retailored and customized? Was that allowed? Their homeroom teacher Rosethorn-sensei hadn't mentioned anything about it, so apparently it was. But not for Hoge. No, Hoge had to sit here in a hat that made her look like a middle schooler and a blazer that made her look like a dork in a bodysuit instead of a cool shadow warrior that everyone could love and depend on.

She spent most of that train ride moping and watching everyone else have fun together. So when every applicant from Shiketsu started to gather outside the NQA building and 1-D started to naturally crowd up to and then pass by the easily-overlooked Hoge, she was already on the edge of flipping out.

And when Hoge got worked up, her Quirk Wasuremono kicked into overdrive and made every noise she produced quieter, every color she reflected dimmer, and every edge to her form harder to make out. She was already a hunching, desaturated smear in the rough shape of a teenager from the combination of stressors. There was something that Wasuremono couldn't obscure, though.

Hoge started elbowing her way back to the front again. She made harsh tsking sounds that probably didn't even escape the insectoid helmet on her head. She cleared her throat and overpronounced, in order to get by the volume reduction of her Quirk, "Everyone, let's remain orderly. We can't let ourselves be shown up by the other schools."

She knew there were better ways to say it, and better appeals to make besides. But she only knew it intellectually and these were the only words she had at the moment. Saying something instead of swallowing down her frustration at least helped calm herself down a little, even if the message wouldn't go over well with her classmates. People were talking and responding behind her, but she wasn't really paying attention.

Hoge was turning her critical eye across the teeming crowd of kids here from across the country in order to take this exam. She only recognized a couple of the schools on sight, like their traditional rival UA from Tokyo who could only be identified by the famous instructors guarding over them. She also paused on a group of students that were just dressed in polo shirts and straight-legged pants, like historical cosplayers of the late 20th century. They didn't even have costumes on. UA students clearly had the best of it, able to show up fully as their individual personas with all of their gear. But Hoge was comforted by the fact that at least Shiketsu didn't look like unarmed re-enactors.

It was about then, when Hoge was shifting gears from evaluating uniforms to predicting other applicants' Quirks and their chances, that she heard someone shout "Look!" at the roof of the building. Hoge instantly disappeared into the reflexes and attitude of Marumaru.

Maru swept into a lower and wider stance, ready to spring into any direction at a moment's reflex. She looked at the sky and the metal mask helped against the polarization of sunlight. A figure was standing on the edge of the roof! Maru's eyes widened in horror. This had to be a simulation, right? Had the exam already begun? Or was this some troubled person about to make a terrible mark on the minds of every student here? Maru can't fly, only fade away. Hoge needed someone she could trust to get up there and intervene, and whether this was real or just a test, save that figure!

"In--" she began to call out, but surprise choked her softened voice. The person was already falling. They had already leaped out and were beginning to plummet at the ground. A black mass erupted from their back like a mushroom in rapid growth, contorting and bubbling free on long whipping tendrils. A Quirk? An attack? A--

Hoge blinked. She was dumbfounded. The black mass resolved into a parachute, deployed awkwardly close to the building. It didn't seem to have an effective air vent in it, as the figure jerked into a very slow descent. Her body relaxed itself, and she stood up straight. She was awash with second hand embarrassment, and it eclipsed not only the seed of first hand embarrassment from her initial reaction but also the effects of her Quirk like mist burnt off by noon sun. She was just so focused on this strange man dangling off a parachute without even a particle of coolness in his body that there was no part of herself left to keep Wasuremono in its active state.

When he got to the second story, he fumbled the release cord a few times before managing to get a good pull. If Hoge was any judge, he tried to use a fixed expression he got from a movie poster to cover up how he hurt his joints from the three-point landing. There's a few scattered pockets of polite clapping. Hoge only has the presence of mind to give a single delayed clap of her hands, and then she stands there in a rictus of bewildered embarrassment with her arms apart and her hands posed.

A wave of horror blows through Hoge like a miasmic wind. She looks at the awkward man in theatrical clothes as he coughs into his fist to steady his nerves. She is looking at a vision of the future. She could easily become this much of a loser.

Hoge tastes acid in the back of her throat and she just barely avoids throwing up into her mask. This is it. This is Hell. Hell is real, and it's being surrounded by a crowd of people on a too-warm day in a bad mood while looking at somebody embodying the worst version of yourself. The sky yells, this is you, this is the path you are on, and no one else can hear it. That's what Hell is and Hoge has died in her sleep and found it.

"Welcome, everyone, to the Provisional Hero License Examination!," the man in a fashion suit and lab coat begins. Hoge remembers her arms and finally lets them drop. "I'm your host and the owner of this building," and Hoge is shaken again. She wants to cough blood. He's not just a toady trying too hard, he has a life and responsibilities and he's screwing up a base jump in front of hundreds of teenagers. The man - she is so distracted by her own thoughts that she missed his introduction - is still talking. Not that she believes it could be, at this point, but it might be important so she hurries to focus on his words again.

"...et started, so lets go inside, shall we?" The doors burst open in timed choreography behind him. Dour-faced men with cropped haircuts and plain black suits hold them open as the classes of students in many different schools all organize themselves to shuffle in. Hoge just lets the other kids do whatever at this point. She has a lot to reflect on.

Those thoughts are buried under everything to see in the NQA building interior. The facility is a bright, sleek campus typical of cutting edge tech firms. Everywhere she turns her head, Hoge spots a new strange thing that she wants more time to go over. In some places, there's a retro feel of stark geometry, polished chrome, and smooth obsidian ceramics. Mixed up with that aesthetic are details that can only remind Hoge of the WacDonal's Playscapes with their curved metal and flat primary colors. The Oddball in Charge makes a lot of off-hand braggadocios commentary in the looping tour through several hallways on the first floor.

Finally, the crowd makes it to a vast open space somehow contained in the NQA building. The oldest kids, at the front, start making noises of shock, amazement, excitement, and it sends ripples backward through the crowd. Everyone starts getting pumped up even before they see what's going on. In fact, the ones at the rear get most excited of all because they're eager to find out what's got everyone yelling. A crush of children swarm into the arena so everyone can see.

The place is a maze. An actual maze. It's like the kind of thing you would build for psych testing on test rodents in a laboratory, scaled up many times over so people can fit inside. The top is some kind of transparent window, probably a special polymer or lab-made crystal structure. All around the maze is access space, like the structure was built free-standing in a massive warehouse. Hoge is taken with a brief curiosity: if someone were strong enough, could they shove the whole thing forward against the opposite wall? Is it attached to the floor?

Above her, viewing platforms, lab windows, balconies, catwalks, and rigging sprawl around to give total view of every inch of the maze from somewhere above. Bright floodlights constellate from the ceiling far above as multiple stories look into the test chamber.

As the dork in chief goes over the maze hazards and the premise of the key hunt, Hoge takes advantage of her obscurity in the crowd and returns to her identification of threats and weak links. She weaves between shoulders and classes. The further she gets from the students she knows, the weirder everyone seems.

A kid with three different animal heads. An empty set of shoes with a pair of gloves floating above them, and nothing connecting between. People with strange proportions, or dazzling with colorful sparks, or with huge mirror-finish teeth. She sees groups all dressed exactly the same and groups that only seem joined in common because they're standing so close together. People are perched on the wall defying gravity, or propped up by serpentine tails, or keeping themselves aloft in the open air.

Glass top maze. This is a chance for recon, Hoge realizes, and she turns her peaked cap so the brim gets out of her view. Then she braces her arms in front of herself and takes a sprint at the wall. There's a small commotion as strangers begin complaining with each other about being shoved around. Maru plants a foot directly on a bull-headed teen decorated in chains and uses him as a launch platform, and he snorts in anger and shoves a kid over near him. "Watch yourself, Tetsumaro! I'm not taking it today!"

Maru speedily works herself up the wall to a viewing platform already occupied by a bird-headed kid and a couple spectators in white labcoats. She stands on the railing and realizes it's not high enough yet to get a good idea of the layout. So further up she goes, using every trick she's worked so hard to learn. As her heart races from the fear of being so high and exposed, and the thrill of letting loose in this formal setting, Wasuremono builds and pushes attention away from her.

Down on the ground level, the host almost hurts himself by punching a maze wall.

"And don't go thinking you can just go bursting through the walls or ceiling," he goes on as Maru finds herself alone on the outer edge of a lab window. She scans from one side of the maze to the other, trying her hardest to memorize routes through the labyrinth.

"These babies are reinforced by some of the best Quirks money can buy! I dare you to try to break them!" Wasuremono ensures that Hoge's laugh doesn't make it out of the Marumaru helmet. She knows more than one member of her class is going to take that challenge to heart. Who is going to be the first one to smash through? Sen? Kaylee-chan? Maru makes it to the other side of the maze and tests the paths by quickly tracing them with her eyes.

"Now, only one key per person. If you're thinking of sharing a key with your friend, you're out of luck. If we find out that anyone snuck through the doorway without a key, then obviously they won't pass." Well, there goes Plan B. That just leaves Plan C for con, Plan P for pickpocket, and if things get really bad, Plan W for waylay-at-the-exit. But there's going to be lots of them trying that.

"That means that if you're one of the few to find a key in its starting location, you're going to have to protect that key with everything you got from the other students and the pros!" Hoge leaves one part of her mind mulling this over while she tries her best to spot where the most obvious hiding spots for keys would be. They need to be visible from official viewpoints, don't they...? The test is presumably for testing kids for the ability to work under pros and in extreme emergencies. So it's a competence test, but they would also need to test for cool heads and appropriate judgement. Would that be in this phase or another? Or could they really be so incompetent as to think that they don't need to and the schools pre-screened everyone? The structure of the test could be a test to weed out those not ready. Maybe scratch off Plan W, too.

Maru takes the much faster route back to the ground with a series of controlled drops and swings. She's glad she learned to judge distances starting from her feet rather than her eyes. "...that key will be placed back into the maze for someone else to happen upon. The game ends once every key has made it out of the maze!" It takes some doing to aim the last drop so she can safety roll through the legs of someone in a purple leotard and standing a good ten feet tall. "Any questions?" No, Hoge answers distractedly. It's a growth Quirk, right? Like Titan.

"Unfortunate, because it's time we started this thing!" The man's sudden wrap up makes Hoge snap her head towards the front and flicker in a surge of panic. Oh no. He wouldn't. Doesn't he know how dangerous a stampede can b-?

"Everyone, get ready! Let the Provisional Hero" Oh right. The parachute. This man's an idiot. "License Exam..." Hoge begins running in the middle of the man's sentence, darting not towards the entrance of the maze but to someone she saw only a couple minutes ago. She jumps and catches on to the loops of metal links as the host raises a hand triumphantly to the stage lights high above.

"BEGIN!"

The minotaur teen full barrel charges straight ahead, hot breath steaming from his flared nostrils. A mad glee fixes itself to his face and his footsteps thunder even among the crowd of running, over-enthusiastic students jostling to be the first into unknown danger. Maru dangles from his back feeling as weightless as a flea in fur. A pale mist hisses through her own mask, too, as her tongue triggers the button release for a cloud of aromatherapy. It's not even to control her Quirk this time; she feels a hair's width from a panic attack in this mayhem. She climbs to the large bull-headed guy's shoulder and he gets distracted by the jostling.

"What the hell?," he roars, and his wide horns almost clip Maru off like a ship boom in a thunderstorm when he tries to look at his own back.

"No time! Keep running and we'll both make it through this! Go third from the left!"

"I'm not listening to anything a SHIT-KETSU bug has to say!" He starts to barrel at an angle through the crowd to get to a wall of the opening corridor and scrape her off. Marumaru clicks her tongue in annoyance. "Pig-headed..." She grabs him by the horns and vaults herself over his head, causing it to jerk back harshly. He sticks his huge barrel chest out to compensate, and she plants both feet onto it, then springs with all her might off of him. He doesn't quite keep his balance and catches himself with one massive arm, all his weight crushing a rotund boy nearby who automatically transforms into a huge rubbery ball. "It's a BULL HEAD!"

But Maru is already trying to crowd-surf the stampede, speeding in unstable strides somewhere between a sprint and a leap from shoulder to head and trying to stick to only the ones that seem like they can take it. She gets into a rhythm and the excitement of it bubbles out of her as laughter uncut by her temporarily suppressed Quirk. Hoge knows she's making enemies, at some level, but she didn't exactly set out to get into this situation and then there's the sheer fun of speed to distract her.

When she gets to the thinned out crowd at the start of the pack, a massive floor panel falls open and dumps a good dozen students into a shimmering blue portal sitting at the bottom of the drop. Hoge lets out a choked squeak of surprise and kicks off the last person she landed on, a buff girl with dinosaur features. She yells at Maru in a mix of outrage and betrayal as she drops into the pit, but Maru catches the lip of the drop on the other side. She watches a couple more kids fall in as they try to stop their sprint and the crowd behind them shoves them forward.

A quick pull-up and Marumaru stands on the other side of the gap. The applicants capable of flight or super-strong leaps go over the obstacle without a thought, but many of the kids are clearly racing to figure out their own ways across and losing time every second. Hoge spots Christopher push his way to the front and they catch eyes across the gap. She can't help herself. Behind the mask, she grins at him, eyes sparkling, shoulders back triumphantly. She taps two fingers twice on her left wrist.

Clock's ticking~!

She spins on the ball of her left foot and gives a jaunty wave, sprinting into the corridor she mentally mapped before, and disappearing from sight.